How the voice came about

Barry White didn’t always have the distinctive voice that made him famous. Up to the age of 14 he sounded pretty much like any other adolescent young black boy living in Los Angeles. He was a high-pitched Michael Jackson sound-alike, exactly the same as thousands of other black boys in the neighbourhood. He called it “the high treble of a typical teenager”.

But then suddenly and without warning one morning his voice broke, and it was as if a miracle had occurred. That fateful morning his mother Sadie whooped with joy at the new sound emanating from her son’s mouth – straight away she knew it was very special. As White described it himself: “When adolescence hit me, my sound didn’t go down a tenor the way most boys do and stay there. Mine went down twice, first to a tenor and then to a bass singer – the second one was like a drop off the Empire State Building.”

According to White, the change came suddenly, overnight: “One morning I woke up with my new voice and hair all over my face. My mother called me over and examined my cheeks and chin closely with her eyes and fingertips.” Sadie looked at him and said: “My God, my baby has become a man.” White says: “Once my voice dropped there was no escaping its power. Everywhere I went I could see the immediate effect it had on people. There really was nothing else quite like it.”

White described the experience: “You go to sleep one night, sounding like you have done for the last 14 years. The next day you wake up and, say, wish your mother, ‘Good morning,’ and woooah. When I talk you can feel my chest vibrate, can’t you? You bet, feels scary. Well it scared the hell out of me and my mother.” My mother told me: “My son’s a man now.”

Extracted from Chapter Five of Tom Rubython’s biography of Barry White called White Music available at Barnes & Noble from 12th April.