Jesco White and family will
take audiences on emotional roller coaster in “The Wild and Wonderful Whites of
West Virginia” this fall
On July 30th, 1956,
President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a resolution that made “In God We Trust”
our nation’s official motto. But that
wasn’t the only significant event that took place on that warm summer day.
Not too far from Washington D.C.
in a little place called Bandytown, West Virginia, a women gave birth to a boy
that would one day change the way people looked at rural Appalachian
culture. That newborn’s name was Jesco
White.
It was a great day in American
history.
Chances are, if you haven’t
heard of Jesco White, somebody you know has.
The legend began nearly two
decades ago and its origins, some might say, came completely by coincidence.
It all started when a young man
named Julian Nitzberg paid the toll to get into
West Virginia in hopes of finding a story
for his next documentary.
He was headed to
Boone County,
West Virginia,
a small coal mining area in the heart of the
Appalachian
Mountains. His plan was to
find and feature a man named Hasil Atkins, a one man punk rock band who was
known for his one-of-a-kind live performances.
Little did Nitzberg know that
along with his unique documentary about the local musical legend, he would
discover and introduce the world to what could easily be described as
America’s most
unlikely hero.
Nitzberg found Atkins and began
recording the everyday occurrences of his life.
While filming an Atkins
performance at a local bar, a fight broke out.
The fight went on for a few moments but was eventually broken up. The person who broke up the scuffle was a
young lady named Mamie White. She
noticed the cameras and approached Nitzberg after she cleared the tussle,
saying that her family was throwing a birthday party the next day. She insisted that Nitzberg come to her house
and meet her brother Jesco.
Not really knowing what to
expect, Nitzberg accepted Mamie’s invitation and showed up at the White
property the following day with a camera and an open mind. What he found was one of the most outrageous,
but lovable families the world would ever know.
Audiences were first introduced
to Jesco White in 1991 in a documentary called “The Dancing Outlaw.”
The original film featured
several members of the White family but focused particularly on Jesco. He is the oldest son of legendary mountain
dancer Donald.(D. Ray) White. The
documentary was a success in nearly every angle of measurement, but it’s most
affective monologue was that of Jesco explaining his life after his fathers
tragic death. “It’s left to me to carry
on this perdition,” says Jesco as he holds his father’s tapdancing shoes in one
of the movies most identifying scenes.
But the legend of Jesco White
almost never reached the public.
Nitsberg returned to
Kentucky with some
footage of Jesco and the rest of the White family. Appal shop, the film production workshop that
Nitzberg worked for thrived on the culture of Appalachian America.
But after reviewing the tape,
Appal shop representatives said that no one would be interested, and they
rejected the idea. Nitzberg then turned
to friend and fellow film maker Jacob Young, and together they constructed one
of the most recognized underground documentaries of all time.
No one could ever have predicted
the mass underground following that the film would accrue, and to this day,
even those involved cannot pinpoint the reason for it’s success.
“It’s just one of those things,”
said Storm Taylor, producer of the new White Family feature due out this
winter.
“We are talking about a third
generation VCR tape that has somehow traveled through
America.
From mechanics to attorneys,
it’s made it’s way across this country in a way that advertisers would love to
figure out.”
Taylor’s past work in the field includes
stints of field production for the popular MTV shows “Jackass” and
“Wildboyz.”
When
Taylor first saw the documentary, he began
questioning what it was in particular that made Jesco so likable despite his
rustic way of thinking. “I wanted to
find out the reason why he is famous. I
wanted to know why everyone, myself included, liked him so much. So I started asking people everywhere. Around town, on the internet, I talked to
tons of people that said, I love Jesco” and then I would ask why and they would
say, “I don’t know, because he’s Jesco!”
“He’s become a symbol for this
subculture. He’s a hero for hillbillies
and outlaws, but it’s more than that.
I’ve yet to put a finger on it.”
“Obviously he is a good tap
dancer. But he’s not famous because of
his dancing. He’s famous because he is
what he is.”
Storm Taylor (aka Stormboy) was
once a staple in the groundling
Old
City nightlife back in
the 90's. He started out working at
Ella' Guru's,
Knoxville's
first premiere music showplace. He then
took his passion for music and knowledge of the nightclub industry and helped
establish The Underground as one of the south’s hottest party scenes of it's
time. As the former resident DJ for Lord
Lindsey, The Underground, and The Boiler Room,
Taylor has seen many cycles of students,
punks, and gothlings come of age before his eyes. More recently, his personal journey has led
him away from the nightlife, and towards another vein of culture all
together.
Taylor stays busy these days by producing
television shows and hosting The Dirt Poor Comedy Tour (Dirtpoorcomedy.com).
Taylor also created a TV show called Yokel, an unscripted
traveling program that aired on Turner South.
The show and his love for outlaw culture eventually led to his first
meeting with Jesco.
“I didn’t know what it was...but
I wanted to meet him, for years and years and one of the things I wanted to do
with the show was have an episode with him.”
When
Taylor began to make strides toward an actual
meeting with Jesco, who seemed to love the opportunity to share his story in
the previous films, he found it far more difficult than he anticipated.
Jesco had been extremely
mismanaged in the past. There were a lot
of people who had abused him for his celebrity and gave him bad advice in the
years following his initial fame.
So
Taylor took a different approach to Jesco and
slowly earned the trust of the family before he ever recorded the first
frame.
“I want to come meet you, I want
to help you, if you want us to film we will, if you don’t then we won’t,”
Taylor said to Jesco
before the two met.
“I must have been one of the few
people, if not the only one that said “If you don’t want to film, then we won’t
worry about it.” Everyone else was
saying “We’ll do this and this, and we will make you thousands,” and I was just
wanting to help him,” explained
Taylor.
It took
Taylor a while, but eventually he arranged a
meeting after expressing his willingness to help.
“He was reclusive at the time,”
said
Taylor. “He lived in a small trailer in
Peytona,
WV
with no running water. His property laid
in a holler on the end of a dead end road so he knew if anyone was coming.”
“The night I met him it was
dark. We came through a gate that said
“Do not enter.” I saw a flashlight come
from behind his trailer and I had to take a step back. It was that powerful.”
Taylor
then put the long-awaited meeting into further perspective, “I’ve been in a
position in my life where I’ve met a reasonable number of celebrities. Never been awe struck. Never...until I met Jesco White. Nobody can explain his mystique...I’ll never
forget that first meeting.”
After shaking the chills of his
first Boone county experience,
Taylor
found Jesco to be as friendly as he had imagined. “He walked right up to me and said “Hello, my
name’s Jesco White, would you like a cup of coffee?” With this hospitable inquiry,
Taylor realized that his
genuine approach had earned Jesco’s
respect.
“I asked him what he needed and
before I could even complete the question, he said “Wood and Water.”
At the time, White was using a
commercial water hose that ran from a spring, through the mountains to an aluminum
bathtub up on a hill, with the water hose hanging out of a tree.
“My crew and I got him some
water and split a bunch of wood with him and he knew we weren’t there to rip
him off.”
“I asked him if he ever thought
about painting his trailer, and again before I could finish he replied, “Brown
with green trim.”
After a little remodeling and
rearranging, Jesco White and Storm Taylor were old friends.
Storm’s production team began to
record footage.
“It’s not going to rely on the
old one (documentary),”
Taylor
stated. “The last thing we wanted to do
was to make it an update type thing, or make it a before and after. We wanted to follow the lives of not just
Jesco, but the entire family.”
“The film is about the
offspring, the siblings, and the roots of Appalachian dancing,” summed
Taylor.
“It would be nice to reflect on
The Dancing Outlaw with the new film, but ultimately, this has to stand on it’s
own. You won’t have to see The Dancing
Outlaw to enjoy this,”
Taylor
assured.
“There is a hierarchy of D. Ray
and Birty Mae. When D. Ray was shot,
Birty Mae became the matriarch. Then
there’s brothers and sisters of course, but we are taking it on down to the
nieces and nephews. We’ve gone to
several states for this thing,” said
Taylor.
Taylor plans on introducing viewers to the
“other side of the family” as well.
“There are actually two clans of
White’s. We are taking a crew to
Minnesota, where the
other sector of the family lives. They
all started in
West Virginia,
but moved away to get a taste of the outside world.”
Taylor’s
crew even caught up with the infamous Billy Hastings, who shares his side of
the stories in true
Boone
County fashion in the
film.
The source for the movie’s
sometimes intense, sometimes upsetting, but always moving grit comes directly
from the relationship that was built beforehand.
“I’ve had to throw away
everything I learned in film school for this shoot,” admitted
Taylor.
“I have grown to love these
people, and they trust me as much as they can trust anyone. I feel like the five year process that we
have went through with the White’s goes a lot deeper than us making this
movie,” said Taylor. “These people are
our friends.”
The documentary will be called
“The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia.”
The distribution will be handled
by MTV home video, a new branch of the flagship music station, but the interest
is held by Viacom. A release date has
yet to be nailed down, but
Taylor
says the film should be hitting film festivals sometime this fall.
With big names like MTV and
Viacom behind the new White family project, the quality of production has risen
to new heights. For the first time ever,
audiences will be able to see Jesco White in HD, something that many fans never
dreamed would happen.
“I’m overwhelmed,” stated
Taylor.
“Their lifestyles are
overwhelming, the amount of footage we have is overwhelming. We have interviews with senators, people like
Hank Williams III, Marty Stuart, and so many others. We could just show Birty Mae’s birthday and
it would be an amazing film, so we are extremely lucky to be as overwhelmed as
we are. Everybody knows they are
wild. If we can do something to let
everyone know how wonderful they are, I’ll be satisfied.”
“A lot of people don’t hold
Jessie up to the level that we do because they don’t know anything about him,”
he continued. “It’s funny to think that
twenty years from now, they probably will.
These traditions are fleeting, but ultimately they come back
around. We are going to try to embrace
the history of their culture and their surroundings,” concluded a tired but
anxious
Taylor.
“The Wild and Wonderful Whites
of West
Virginia...They
are crazy, but you just love them. I
can’t wait for people to see the family again.”
