Willard White - Early Life

Early Life

He was born into a poor but supportive Jamaican family in Kingston. His father was a dockworker, his mother a housewife. White first began to learn music by listening to the radio and singing Nat King Cole songs. He was also inspired by the American singer and civil rights activist, Paul Robeson. He was a founding member of the Jamaica Folk Singers, sang with the Jamaica Amateur Operatic Society and trained at the Jamaican School of Music. In a passing visit to Jamaica, Evelyn Rothwell (wife of conductor Sir John Barbirolli) heard him sing and suggested that he go to study in London. Instead, his father bought him a one-way ticket to New York, because "the flight was cheaper". He won a scholarship and continued his studies with celebrated bass Giorgio Tozzi at the Juilliard School.