The nasty taste of prison

On the first Friday of February 1960, Barry White and some friends set out to steal some tyres from a local Chevrolet dealership. He had always, in the past, been clever enough always to avoid capture by the LAPD. But he went too far. “The boys said we could make a lot of bread with these tires so I reluctantly agreed to go along.” The actual theft went perfectly but it was too big to be ignored and the wheels and tyres too traceable. By Saturday afternoon a determined effort by the LAPD saw them surround Barry White’s family home and officers took him off in handcuffs. As he recalled: “My poor mother did not know what was happening and it broke her heart.”

White was full of remorse and he never let his mother visit him for the whole of the time he was locked up. He said it was the worst moment of his life when he heard the gates clang behind him at Juvenile Hall: “It was the loudest clang I ever heard in my life. I’d never been locked up like this before.” It turned out that the tyres were worth thousands of dollars, much more than White had realised. There was no question of bail before his trial as he said: “Well, I knew my mother wasn’t coming for me this time.”

Barry White hated being in prison: “I didn’t like people telling me what to do, when to get up, when to go to bed, what to eat, when not to eat, when to use the toilet and when not to use the toilet.” He was also frightened of leaving his mother to fend for herself: “She didn’t deserve having two sons behind bars.”