Although the music industry was highly segregated at the time, it is uncertain whether he was White or African American.
His four titles issued on the Gennett and Champion labels have been seen as stylistically similar to White blues artists such as Dick Justice and Frank Hutchison, and therefore reissued on anthologies of early White country music by County Records[2] and Arhoolie.
[9] However, research published by Christopher King in Issue # 12 of the journal 78 Quarterly suggests otherwise.
In an interview, Mildred Justice, the daughter of Dick Justice recalled that her father played with a railway worker called Bailey Rose who she described as "quite a bit older than daddy".
He was "the man who sounded the most like daddy" and taught her father how to play "Old Black Dog" and "Brown Gal".