Josh White

The finale--last Thursday--of the Boston Summer Folk Festival was a sad affair with Josh White.

Mr. White, in all fairness, was nearly beside himself with misery resulting from poor health and financial difficulties. Only towards the end of the performance and during an instrumental blues interlude with bassist Al Lucas, whose busy, well articulated work here was a high spot of the night, was he in good form.

His chief undoing was in giving over half the program to his son and daughter; the posters had proclaimed: "Josh White --Ballade and Blues," but with the White family singing campfire ditties like "There's a Hole in the Ground," the show was certainly not as advertised. Teenaged Josh Jr. tried (his own word) a half dozen numbers in an adolescent tone reminiscent of Jimmie Rodgers; Daughter Beverly fared better, mostly because her material far outweighed her brother's often embarrassingly juvenile repertoire.

The feeling of this writer is that Josh White may well be over the hill. It's an uncomfortable thought, yet the signs are unmistakably there. Although someone mentioned that Josh White could keep going downhill for twenty years, the hope is that he will recover.