Booker T. Washington "Bukka" White (November 12, 1906[1] – February 26, 1977) was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer.

His first full-length biography, The Life and Music of Booker "Bukka" White: Recalling the Blues (2024), has been published by the University Press of Mississippi.

Booker T. Washington White was born on a farm south of Houston in northeastern Mississippi on November 12, 1906.

[3] His father John White was a railroad worker,[4] and also a musician who performed locally,[2] primarily playing the fiddle, but also mandolin, guitar and piano.

[citation needed] He got married at 16 years old, with his father giving him a new Stella guitar as a wedding present.

[6] White moved from the hill country to work on a farm at Swan Lake in the Mississippi Delta.

The gospel songs were done in the style of Blind Willie Johnson, with a female backing singer accentuating the last phrase of each line.

White and his second wife started farming near Aberdeen, back in the Mississippi hill country east of Houston.

[14] He probably first went to Chicago in 1935, travelling from St. Louis with Peetie Wheatstraw, where he made friends with Big Bill Broonzy, Washboard Sam, Memphis Slim and Tampa Red.

Back home in Aberdeen in October, he was arrested and charged with murder over shooting a man in the thigh.

He was tried on 8 November, convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, to be served in Mississippi State Penitentiary, commonly known as Parchman Farm.

[18] After returning to Mississippi, where he and his wife decided to permanently separate, he went back to Chicago, playing in small clubs with his own four-piece band.

[23] In 1959, White's recording of "Fixin' to Die Blues" was included on the album The Country Blues, compiled by Samuel Charters for Folkways Records to accompany his book of the same name and a key element in the American folk music revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Dylan's cover aided a rediscovery of White in 1963 by guitarist John Fahey and his friend Ed Denson which propelled him into the folk music revival.

On November 21, 2011, the Recording Academy announced the addition of "Fixin' to Die Blues" to its 2012 list of Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients.

"[30] White's 1963 recordings of "Shake 'Em on Down" and spoken-word piece "Remembrance of Charlie Patton" were both sampled by electronic artist Recoil (mostly a one-man effort by Alan Wilder of Depeche Mode) for the track "Electro Blues for Bukka White" on the 1992 album Bloodline.