Friday, May 25, 2018

Jack White - "Humoresque"

"Last year, White purchased a musical manuscript written by Al Capone in Alcatraz (in the 1920s, even gangsters could read and write music) for a song called 'Humoresque.' ... Capone, it seems, played tenor banjo in a prison band with Machine Gun Kelly on drums. The song, a take on a Dvorák work, turns out to have been recollected, not composed, by Capone, but White still ended up recording it as the closing track on his new album. He's moved by the idea that a famous murderer had a weakness for such 'a gentle, beautiful song.' 'It shows you, like, what we were talking about earlier,' he adds. 'Human beings are complicated creatures with lots of emotions going on.'"
Rolling Stone cover story on Jack White (March 12, 2018)