August 28, 2025 • 36 mins
Diagnosed with psoriasis at age five, Lianne Hunter grew up learning to explain, defend, and sometimes hide her skin. Today, she’s built an online community, FixMyPsoriasis, and co-leads the Get Your Skin Out campaign, turning personal vulnerability into collective strength. Lianne opens up about raising her son with honesty and empathy, navigating tough moments in public, and why community is the key to living openly with psoriasis. And in our skin history segment, we uncover the story of Josh White—the groundbreaking blues guitarist whose psoriasis shaped both his career and a one-of-a-kind partnership with Ovation Guitars.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Ruby.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm Holly Fry and this is season two of Our Skin,
a personal discovery podcast. Today we are super thrilled to
welcome Leanne Hunter to Our Skin. Leanne is a very
passionate soriasis advocate and the co founder of a particular
(00:32):
project within the Get Your Skin Out movement, and this
is dedicated to making ciasis visible but also beautiful. And
the photographs that are part of this project are so
spectacularly gorgeous. You don't just get your skin out, you
blow people away with how beautiful it is. And through
her work, Leanne has built a community where showing your
(00:52):
skin is, yes, an act of bravery, but more than that,
it is an act of connection. And we're going to
learn more about Leanne first, and then we're going to
step back into history to discover the story of a
man named Josh White, who is a blues guitarist who
siriasis manifested primarily on his hands, which is something that,
as we'll learn, Leanne can relate to and also, as
(01:14):
you can imagine, made that a tricky proposition for a career.
So Leanne, thank you so much for being on Our Skin.
We're so happy to have you.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
I want to start with your overall experience, because you
were diagnosed really quite young. When did you, as a
kid realize, oh, this is my life, like this is
something I have to manage for a prolonged period of time.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I was diagnosed when I was five, so I don't
really remember life without zorasis. Thinking back, I have a
sister who's a year younger than me, and there was
kind of points of difference as we were growing up
in that bedtime. For example, being quite young, I'm running
around the house trying to find my more, my dad,
my sister, somebody to put cream on my back so
I could go to bed, because it was part of
(01:56):
the kind of daily routine and that didn't have to
help him for my so obviously we were a little bit.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Different growing up.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
There was a couple of like comments from younger children
around you know, why do you have corn flakes which
is a breakfast cereal whit? You know, I you have
corn flakes in your hair like I witsor isis and
kind of seeing that somebody didn't really understand what that was.
But I think it was probably when we got to
the teen years and I had more of an understanding
(02:24):
and more of a kind of grasp on like treatment
cycles and things like that I was like, Okay, this
is not going away.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I need to get under the skin of this and
figure it out.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
And there was an event that happened to you when
you were a teen where you were at a swimming
pool and having a flare and someone asked.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
You to leave.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Correct, Yeah, that's right because they thought you had something contagious.
They didn't understand. Yeah, that had to have been so
incredibly gutting. The teen years have their own traps for
somebody that has no additional stressors to deal with, how
did you handle that as a young person and do
you still run into those of incidence?
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah, So it was actually the lifeguard that pulled me out,
which was the most frustrating thing about the situation, because
the particular swim pool that we were in had been
built for like the Commonwealth Games, and there was the
whole kind of thing around inclusivity, and so they really
should have known and yeah, you're right, thirteen, you do
(03:21):
not want to be stood on a.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Pool side or for anything.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I have a really small sister in the water that
I'm trying to like grapple out with me, and to me,
I was like, no, I'd never been accused of being
contagious before as well, so I think I was a
bit shocked and I was like, no, it's just crisis,
and like quite innocently saying it's just crisis, and there
was no recognition what the condition was and a lot
of resistance. Well regardless they think you contagiously, You've got
(03:47):
to get out, and by that point I was like,
I just need to disappear. I think the situation wouldn't
happen in that way now in this day and age
because of the awareness. I think it probably if it
happened now, would stammer around a lot more like I
am not getting out.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
It was tough, but you know.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
It does still happen now occasionally, not the contagious thing.
But I have an eight year old boy, and when
he was born, I was determined to getting the poll
within regardless of how bad mycerisis was, and he is
the best distraction on any given day. There's so much
innocence in children that I have had kind of parents
(04:24):
pull children away it's particularly bad. And there was a
particular situation so Oscar kind of he's grown up, just
really accepting what it is, and like there's a real
curious nature to the way he approaches it. And he
I don't think he saw this woman pull away, but
perfect time, and he's kind of come over and started
kissing the patches and saying like, oh yeah, oh, she's
a saw And this woman that had pulled a child
(04:47):
away was just watching and observing. And then she actually
came back over and was like, I'm really sorry I
kind of pulled away with fear.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Would you mind telling me what that is? A sawy
little boy kissing it?
Speaker 1 (04:58):
And so that for me was like a really nice
because I think sometimes with awareness, you don't know, some
people sometimes need that prompting.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
But the fact that she could backtrack and then, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
That was a nice teaching for her child as well,
to kind of demonstrate Okay, well I didn't know.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Now I'm trying to understand, and we open the conversation.
So it was nice.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I like that you have accidentally raised ask her to
be an advocate for people to understand better.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I also want to talk about your experience with the
medical community, because you were diagnosed when you were very
very young, but a lot has really changed in terms
of treatment and education of both doctors and patients. What
has your experience been, because a lot of guests tell
us that self advocacy becomes the biggest part of it.
Sometimes you have to go to many doctors and explain
(05:43):
it over and over, which puts a lot of burden
on the patient to be an educator as well as
someone that needs help. Will you tell us what that
part of your journey's been like.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
I think you're right, it has really changed over time,
but it's also really dependent on the individual that you see,
whether that's a doctor or dem ptologists. And I can
only speak from the UK because I've grown up through
that healthcare system. You know, you get seven minutes with
a doctor to try and explain something that impacts every
aspect of your life, and they're very much only treating
(06:14):
the kind of physical condition and it's so much more so.
I think for a long time I was told it's
a skin condition, you just need to creamy plaques, and
you know, here's some treatment that will help with the
plaque thing, and then it has to get to a
certain point. There's only some treatments in the new it's
a real struggle to get referred to the next level,
(06:36):
which is a dermatologist who hold the keys to a
lot more information and a lot more treatments. And you
can wait a year to get to that point, trying
failing treatments. Then you get to the dermatology, you've got
fifteen minutes. You'll hit with a lot of very medical questions.
And I'm not a medical person. I don't really clearly
don't understand a lot about my condition, which is why
(06:56):
I've come to you, and it can be quite intimidating,
so I mean, and I've had it since I was five.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
So once my mum.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Handed over the reigns of treatment, it was a kind
of really uphill learning curve as to how to get
a grip of those appointments to get the right outcome
for me, Like sharing.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
My journey online and learning.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
From other people the outcomes of their appointments was a
real turning point for me because there's a whole lot
of knowledge from other people and that was something that
I then was felt quite passionately about sharing with other
people as well, how to empower themselves with those appointments
to make sure they're getting the best out of it,
to make sure they're asking the right questions to kind
of put the other pieces of the puzzle together, so
(07:38):
we're not just talking about the scabs on the skin.
What else is impacting you? What else can you put
on these kind of questionnaires? How else can you take
hold of your autoimmune disease and treat it as one
versus just that and put that back to the dermatologist
and the medical practitioner so they can help guide that
as well.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Amazing, you share something in common with our historical figure
that we're talking about today, which is psoriasis often appearing
on your hands. That is a place where it's really visible.
So you have that whole problem of people not understanding,
but also that has to make your day to day
just excruciating because there's nothing we're not doing with our
(08:21):
hands all day long. How do you handle that? And
is that the hardest place for you to have a
flare or are there others that are kind of contenders
for the worst.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Definitely the hardest, Yeah, because it's also very unpredictable. So ironically,
if I can get all of my other services under control,
my nails will be there to remind me that it
is still here. I have not had a nail flare
for a good few years. But you're right, you can't
hide it. You know, if it's bad on my arm
and I don't feel confident to show it, I put
cardigan on. You can't really do anything with you nails.
You can't put nail varnish on when it's flaring. It
(08:52):
really disfigures them. I work in a corporate environment. When
I first started out, there's a lot of handshakes a
clientstead of like, no, I don't want to share your hand,
and like really simple things like keyboards never used to
be so touch sensitive, so you had to really press
on a keyboard, which was so painful, and you're expected
to work.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
At speed, and like, I can't dipe it's really sore.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
So there was that, and then I think probably the
worst time where I was most aware of it was
when I had my little boy.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
And you don't realize how much you do with your hands.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
And I've got this tiny little baby, we're out and
about the nails were really disfigured and just hanging off
the fingers and I'm trying to feed him in public
or I'm trying to pick him up, and it's just overwhelming.
On its own without then people kind of staring at
your fingers and you get funny looks about that. And
(09:43):
then there's been a few times where shop assistants won't
take the coins out of your hand because there'll be
too busy staring at your nails and you're like, can
I pay for this drink?
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Or and they'll say you put the money on the side.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Early adopter of Apple Pay, h wear a lot of gloves.
I also want to talk to you, of course about
Get your Skin Out, because there are a lot of
people that experience what you do and they don't then
get involved in a global effort to educate and raise
awareness and also improve acceptance. So what made you think like, yeah,
(10:19):
I need to be part of that.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Holly Dylan is the founder of Getting Skinned Out. I
met Holly at the beginning of our kind of online
sirrisis journeys. We did another campaign together, and I mean,
she is a complete trailblazer and I had kind of
started out my journey trying to seek information and look
for other people that were like me, and I'd met
(10:41):
Holly online. Then we came together and I was like, Wow,
you have the same passion as me, but We're very different,
like she's a total extrovert, but we both had this
kind of mission where we wanted to demystify the condition.
We had such a good grip on our condition and
we were not shy to show you our skin and
it was all coming.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
We wanted to have.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Better days with ours crisis, and we wanted to make
sure that everyone living with it felt comfortable enough to
just do what they wanted to do. So she had
just launched the campaign. She is so happy to get
in front of the camera. I'm more of a behind
the camera kind of person, like I will sit in
the DMS and I will offer all of the support
that I can, which she's happy to strip down and
get on the billboard. But we also wanted to bring
(11:23):
people together and kind of have those conversations that we
needed to have, but people were always too scared to
have them. So we brought nutritionists and I think at
one of the events we had like a sex therapist
and like really have those open, brave conversations that touch
on every impact of your life that crisis can touch
and just go here, go like this is everything.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Like here we are on a billboard. We're doing it today.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
You might not want to do it, but eventually you're
going to see that you can get involved in this
and it's okay, and you can go to the beach
and have a servissa. Someone is going to know what
it is. So I think that was the driving force
behind it, and it still is now.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah, it's so cool. It's like literally a world changing
movement at this point, which is amazing. So congratulations. You
kind of touched on this, but I want to talk
a little bit more about community because of course that
is a big part of get your Skin out, but
you have also built your own community online. What has
having that kind of community meant to you personally?
Speaker 3 (12:20):
It's been such a good support system.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
I think the reason why I started was to share
what I was learning, but also to find other people
that kind of were going through it the way that
I was. And it can be quite an isolating condition,
and so if I was finding one two other people
that were living with what I was living with, then
you know you're not alone. The community built quite quickly,
(12:44):
so I was like, this is great, and I've got
loads of friends.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Now.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
A lot does happen behind the scenes, and a lot
happens in the DMS, and I think that's a really
important part because the way that I approached the risis,
in the way that I put it out into the community.
I am very comfortable and confident with having it because
I've had it for thirty five years, so it's.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Not a new conversation for me. But the community has.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Like a whole host of people who have either just
had it or they've always lived with it but been
too a shame to even talk about it.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
And there's something so special in.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Creating a place where whether you are two days in
or thirty five years in, you can breathe and you
can be like, oh, Okay, you just get it and
I need particular advice on this area, or I just
need to share a bad day in this area, and
it's yeah, it's really special.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
You also had some really impressive foundational support from your family,
and you've said before that your parents always told you
be aware of your psoriasis, but don't let it consume you,
which is pretty incredible advice from a parent. How have
you put that advice into practice in your own life.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
There's a really famous saying, fake it till you make it,
And it's a journey right every day is a journey.
I think there's like a kind of bigger perspective. If
I didn't have CIRISIS, I would have something else that
was potentially adding to a list of insecurities that I
have in my day. So quite early on, after this
women pool incident, after various other things, you can feel
(14:14):
yourself pulling back, and then you have to make a
decision is crisis is going to define me? Or am
I going to define how I live with cirisis. That
was kind of the thinking. And then I find the
community and it's almost once I'd created that and I'd said, look,
I'm going to live confidently with this condition.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
I have to show up every day.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
And do that now because I can't feel like, oh guys,
I don't feel that way anymore. So there is, to
an extent, there's an element of faking soil you make it.
And I do have bad days, That's what I say.
I don't, but every bad day there's also been a
good day, and I wouldn't be sat here without it,
So there is a lot to be grateful for. I
wouldn't have connected with Holly and all the other people
in the community.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
So yeah, I just keep faking. So you make it.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
I love it, and now you are, of course also
a mom who you talked about your little way earlier.
What were those conversations like initially, when did he start
to get the discussion of what it was that you
had and what it meant, and what was like the
main thing that you really wanted him to understand about it.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
I don't remember at what point it became like a
specific discussion. He just kind of grew up aware of it.
And you know, we've had to give it different names
until he was old enough to understand it's crisis and
now I can explain what it is on a top
line level. But he used to call it out cheese,
and he understood that some days it would be quite sore,
but it was nothing to worry about.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Because if he got a cut, I've got the same ouching.
I'm like, yeah, kind of a bit different.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
The most important thing was to kind of give him
the language, whether that was like physical language or like
verbal language, to approach things like kindly and curiously, because
when I was younger, like, there was a tendency for
someone to start the curious conversation by saying, ooh, what's that?
And I'm so triggered by the word ooh yeah, because
(16:00):
it's like, well, it's not it's orrisis, it's a natural
thing if you don't really understand. So I think any
parenting journey and understanding the innocence of a child's mind
and you are what you teach them. So it was
really important to tell him mummy's a little bit different,
but everybody has something that's different and it's something to
(16:20):
be celebrated. And he's so accepting of that now that
it's he will see other people and be like, oh my,
you know, my mummy has something like this, and it's
such a smile and such a it's so open and
it's so innocent, like, you know, let me learn, let
me make you feel better, and let me relate to you.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
So yeah, that was the main thing.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
That's incredible, Leanne. I know you've said that you're shy
and you don't really like to be in public, but
you are an absolute gem and you are a great communicator.
So thank you so much for sharing your story. We
are going to take a step back in time and
we will dive into a really astonishing partnership between a
musician who needed a solution to save his hands and
the company that made that solution possible. Do that in
(17:00):
just a minute, All right, are you ready for some
history talk? So Josh White, the hero of our story,
(17:20):
was born on February eleventh, nineteen fourteen, in Greenville, South Carolina,
and he did not have an easy start in life.
First of all, this was, of course, firmly in the
era of Jim Crow racism, and the White family was black.
His father was institutionalized, and he was still very very young,
and kind of to help make ends meet, Josh fell
(17:41):
into this work guiding blind street musicians all across the South.
And while he was doing this job, he picked up
some guitar skills on his travels, and it turned out
that Josh was a really great musician, and so by
his early teens he was already making music history. He
worked primarily along side musician that was very well known
(18:02):
named Blind Joe Taggert, and he became one of the
youngest black session artists ever recorded in history. At the time,
Josh was primarily performing things like religious and gospel music,
along with some very secular blues, but his range was
really really vast. Later, he ended up on Broadway in
a nineteen forty production of John Henry with Paul Robison,
(18:25):
who just ten years before that had broken centuries of
tradition by becoming the first black performer to play Othello,
a part written as a black man in London. It
ran for almost three hundred performances. But all of this
history making was really just the beginning of Josh's story,
because in nineteen forty four, when he was thirty, White's
(18:47):
rendition of a song called One Meatball became a major
commercial success. It made him one of the first blackmail
artists to sell more than a million records. And to
just describe this song, one Meatball, you can listen to it.
It's so easy to find online, and it's a humorous
ballad about a very poor man who has fifteen cents
(19:07):
and he's in a restaurant and all he can afford
to order is one meatball. There's a great refrain where
it's like one meatball, no spaghetti, and I love it.
It's so good, ironically, since pasta is much cheaper than meat.
But that's a whole nother story. One Meatball, Liam, I
would sing the blues. I need more than that.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
I would take the spaghetti.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
She's like, I'll take the spaghetti her fifteen cents will
buy it, so me, it's not good for the risis, right,
this is good advice. But here's the thing. This wasn't
just a hit song that's very catchy, although it is that.
It was also a huge breakthrough because it shattered barriers
in an industry where that kind of recognition was very
rarely given to black musicians. So I want to take
(19:49):
us back for a moment to the music industry in
nineteen forty four. At this point, recording studios and musicians
unions are all segregated. Radio is almost entirely white. Black
artists that did get to record were restricted to selling
what were called race records. That basically meant that only
(20:09):
black customers were marketed to. With those, they certainly did
not get airplay, which of course is the way we
all know that music gets sold and makes money and
gets attention. That was your pathway to having a hit song.
So the question arises of how did Josh manage to
do this? How did he break through? And this is
my favorite part of his story, or one of my
(20:30):
favorite parts of his story. I have a lot It
was something that was called Cafe Society, and it was
a nightclub, and Josh shared the stage there with music icons,
so we're talking Billie Holliday and Lena Horn. Some of
them sang their most iconic songs there for the first time.
And this place was really really special because it was
located in a white neighborhood here in New York Greenwich Village.
(20:52):
It was actually on Sheridan Square in the West Village.
It is widely recognized today as the first integrated nightclub,
and I say that today, but it was purpose built
to be that at the time as well. So at
this point, black performers had of course been performing for
white audiences, but it tended to be either a white
audience or a black audience. The audience was not mixed
(21:14):
ever in the US until Cafe Society, and then both
the lineup of musicians was mixed and the audience was integrated.
Had you ever heard of Cafe Society before? It sounds
like a very cool spot, and it really was an
interesting thing. There's a little bit of a historical jab
at another person in its setup. So the owner of
Cafe Society was this man named Barney Josephson. He was
(21:37):
the youngest of six kids in a lot via the
American family, and he didn't know anything about restaurants or
hospitality when he started Cafe Society. His previous experience was
all in shoe stores. But he loved jazz and he
would go to jazz clubs all over New York. He
often went to the Cotton Club, and what he noticed
(21:58):
was that there was this racial disparity going on and
that some of the best musicians were not getting seen
by anybody because even in clubs in Harlem, like the
Cotton Club, they had to be relegated to like the
back part of the club. And so he was like,
I need to bring these people in front of more
eyes and an integrated audience. But this is the Jab.
So at the time, Claire Booth, loose well known writer,
(22:20):
had coined the term cafe society to talk about fancy
pants people who had a higher esthetic understanding and they
would go to cafes and that was cafe society. And
he's like, no, I'm calling my bar cafe Society, and
anybody can come and it's not about high falutin anything.
Everybody's welcome, which is pretty amazing. If you're going to
insult somebody, do it with purpose. And this place was
(22:42):
a huge hit. Barney's music advisor and his talent scout,
who is named John Hammond, introduced Josh to Barney and
they hit it off. This is kind of a cute
story as well, because Barney had some notes for Josh
because even though his Cafe Society was open to everyone,
he recognized that the patrons there had a very sophisticated
(23:02):
understanding of what was and was not good music. So
he was like, you have to play to my audience.
And so that demure nice boy that was doing gospel
in a press suit gone. Now Josh started wearing this
black velvet shirt that was unbuttoned all the way down
to his belly button and silk slacks. He was definitely
getting his skin out. That is a nightclub outfit, and
(23:24):
it actually became his signature.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Look.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
That's what he was known for when he performed at
Cafe Society for years as a solo act, until of
course nineteen forty four when the Amazing one Meatball hit
and then he started transitioning to national and international tours.
He was just not an entertainer though, because he was
also a voice for change. He became known as a
(23:46):
powerful protest singer. He sang songs that addressed labor issues,
housing inequality, racism. He used his voice for good and
a lot of these songs were written by a man
named Bob Miller. If you know a lot about folk
music and protest music, you know his name. He was
very outwardly and publicly a leftist, and some of these
songs were so provocative that white radio stations, particularly in
(24:10):
the Deep South, refused to play them because they thought
they were in sandiary. How dare you ask for fair
labor wages? Then, of course, during the McCarthy era, this
activism and being associated with leftists came at a price
for Josh. He was blacklisted and that pretty much put
an end to his career as far as a performer.
But he was very smart he found his way around it.
(24:31):
So even in the face of this sort of public persecution,
he influenced music through a couple of instructional works. One
of them was the Josh White Guitar Method. You're a Guitarist,
You've heard of this before. It's considered the first blues
guitar instruction book ever. And then his next venture, which
was the Josh White Songbook, was also a huge hit,
and these publications helped shape the folk revival both in
(24:54):
the US and the UK. Do you ever listen to
folk music?
Speaker 3 (24:58):
No?
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Really, I guarantee they all listen to Josh White. But
this is where our story kind of takes a dramatic turn,
because in nineteen sixty one, he was just forty seven
years old, White's body really started to fail him in
a variety of ways. So he actually suffered multiple heart attacks,
he was diagnosed with progressive heart disease, he had chronic emphysema,
(25:18):
and he had ulcers, the whole bag of stuff. But
perhaps most devastating for a guitarist was the fact that
he developed severe psoriasis that attacked his hands. This is
going to sound so familiar to you because it caused
painful peeling and devastating nail damage. So trying to do
anything with nails that are coming off and cracked is
(25:40):
very painful. Now imagine doing that playing blues guitar and
trying to get through a concert. So basically just had
hands that were a bloody mess after every time he performed.
And this wasn't, of course, just discomfort, as I'm sure
you know, it was agonizing. Can you imagine what that's
like as a performer, it.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Must have been like a cheese great to Yeah, at
the end of you.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Is like I feel like every time I've mucked around
with the guitar, which is not much. I have no skills,
but like they hurt my little Lily White delicate hand.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Well it helps me just tell you says, yes, there's
the physical aspect, but it must have been so frustrating
because it's then holding back from doing something that he loves,
which I imagine, you know, if he was stubborn like
I can be.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
It's like one and this is not going to stop me.
You make it worse.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
And then it's also your livelihood on the line, so
that's an added stressor which can cause flairs. White's manager
Lenn Rosenfeld actually noted in interviews that starting in the
early nineteen fifties, White's performances increasingly required a lot of
pain mitigation, and this really underscores how debilitating this condition
had become foreign artist whose livelihood depended entirely on his fingers.
(26:47):
In the mid nineteen sixties, White's ability to play guitar
was seriously deteriorated and looking really dicey. There was this
incredible collaboration that started with a company called Ovation Guitars
was a musical venture that spun out of Cayman Aircraft
that was named for the engineer, Chris Caman. He was
himself an accomplished guitarist and he also loved music, and
(27:11):
he started Ovation signature guitar that had a design that
featured this parabolic round back body that was made from
ly record, which is a synthetic aerospace derived composite. It's
engineered for projection and resonance. When an aerospace engineer decides
to address music, you get really cool things. And so,
according to both the Ovation original program and Ovation's archival histories,
(27:35):
White actually sought help from Ovation when his psoriasis made
it almost impossible to play guitar. So he described what
he was going through, this potentially career ending pain. A
unique scenario for someone to have to self advocate, not
quite like going to a doctor. But this is a
weird thing because you talk about how people don't hear
you or understand, and in this case, all of these
(27:58):
engineers were like, all right, how do we solve this problem?
Which is pretty impressive, and the solution that emerged was
seriously ingenious Ovation's subassembly foreman, a man named al Gleambowski,
made a cast of White's hands and fingers, and he
produced fiberglass prosthetic nails. So these artificial nails were glued
(28:19):
on with an adhesive that at the time was known
as Eastman nine ten. Today we know it as super glue.
So White actually started going back to this factory once
every couple of months to get his new nails put on,
and this really enabled him to continue his career. He
got to keep touring and recording even though he had
this condition. And in case you were wondering, commercially available
(28:40):
press on nails did come out around this same time.
Although like don't don't use superglue, don't son only under
an engineer's supervision. You are a manicure gal. I can't
imagine trying to strumic guitar with nails that were not
firmly attached to my hand. Thus the super glue has
that ever helped you to put on nails when your
nail dicey? Or is it a calculation because I know
(29:03):
you said it can actually harm them.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
The tricky galance between what I want to look good
and what I want to feel good, so we'll see.
I imagine sticking those on and him trying to play
with a real adjustment as well, though, because you're not
going to have the same feeling.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Their collaboration did not stop there, though, because he inspired
them in turn, and from nineteen sixty six to nineteen
sixty seven, Ovation created a guitar called the Josh White Model.
It was their first signature guitar, and it was the
first ever signature instrument made by a US company for
a black artist. So think about that. This was nineteen
(29:36):
sixty six before we got any such thing, and in
an era when black artists and black musicians were still
facing enormous barriers of recognition. This collaboration wasn't just cool.
It carried a lot of profound symbolic weight. And the
official debut of these guitars was like an event. It
was spectacular. On November fourteenth, nineteen sixty six, at the
(29:58):
Hotel America in Hartford, Connecticut, about three hundred press and
industry representatives all showed up. They gathered to witness history.
White appeared. He played for thirty minutes, so they got
like the coolest private concert ever and displayed this instrument's clarity,
its projection, its sustained, that's resonance. And then he finished
with a really special performance. His two daughters came and
(30:20):
joined him and they did a song together which is
very very sweet. And this partnership between Josh and Ovation
Guitars was just such a win win. Obviously it benefited Josh,
but the collaboration also benefited them because to have the
world's greatest guitarist bring visibility to your roundback design, which
was an emerging technology, is not a bad way to
kick off a launch. And with this new guitar, this
(30:42):
Ovation guitar and his prosthetic fingernails, Josh was back in business.
His later career was marked by a lot of really
impressive feats. He made a lot of television appearances that
really showcased his enduring talent as well as his international appeal.
He appeared to overseas many times. He was on The
Murph Griffin Show, on Hugh Hefner's Playboy Penthouse, He was
on a show called Hooton Nanny that used to be
(31:04):
really popular, as well as others. He also starred in
a concert special for national Swedish television in nineteen sixty
two and then In nineteen sixty five, he starred on
the ITV network special which was called Heart Song Josh
White in the United Kingdom with guest artist Julie Felix
and Alexis Comer. So he was in your home zone
(31:24):
for a bit. He has a number of things that
go wrong after this. He had an automobile accident in
nineteen sixty six, but he did recover and he did
appear as a guest star in nineteen sixty seven on
Canada's CBCTV program Let's Sing Out with Oscar Brand. These
appearances really showed that even though his health was not great,
his voice, his skill as a performer, and just this
(31:47):
magnetic presence he had really remained as powerful as ever.
His final appearance was in May of nineteen sixty nine
on the Canadian TV show One More Time, and just
a few months after that last performance, which was on
September fifth, sixty nine, he died while he was having
surgery for heart valve replacement in a Manhasset, Long Island hospital.
He was only fifty four. I'm fifty four. That's troubling,
(32:11):
But like what he did for music, even if you
don't know his name, you have enjoyed his legacy in
a variety of ways. The ripple effects of his life
they still linger. He had a huge influence in the
UK and in the US on folk revival. So people
like Pete Seeger, Joan Bias, Bob Dylan Odetta, Stefan Grossman,
(32:32):
John Renbourn, all of them have acknowledged Josh White and
his instructional works and style as being significant influences. And
he really adapted within the bounds of his psoriasis so
he could keep doing this thing that he loved. And
his collaboration with ovation presents us with this really beautiful story, right,
a celebrated artist confronting a debilitating condition, finding the right
(32:56):
people who would listen, people who paid attention, and then
put all of their heart, art and expertise and intellect
into finding a solution for his siasis, pain and discomfort.
But here's the thing. This is a very feel good story,
but Josh assoriasis was not being treated by all of this.
They had found a way through, but he still really
was dealing with a lot of rough times in terms
(33:17):
of what treatment and relief were available in the nineteen sixties.
The knowledge that sariasis is in fact an autoimmune disorder
and not just a skin thing that you put cream on.
Was just coming into focus when Josh died, So it
would have been a different world for him. If he
had had access to a lot of the sophisticated medications
that we have today, like biologics that have been developed since,
(33:40):
he could have had a completely different career, although it
wouldn't have worked out for Ovation Guitar maybe as well.
But on our skin, we know that finding that right
team to support you, whether that is doctors or your family,
or a subassembly foreman at a guitar company or an
online community becomes just incredibly essential. And we need community.
All of us need community to feel seen, and we
(34:01):
need to hear each other's stories and to understand that
we are not alone. That's been something you've talked about
and literally every single one of our guests has referenced
that we all need this community. I sure hope Josh
felt supported. I love this story so much standing Ovation
to Ovation Guitars. But now we get to pivot back
to you, Lean because I have two more questions. We
(34:23):
ask these at the end of all of our shows
to all of our guests, but it's important and especially
for people that are new to the siasis community or
trying to understand it. So the first one is what
suggestions do you have for people who maybe don't have
psoriasis themselves, but they love someone who does and they
want to be helpful and supportive.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
I think stay curious, and there's power in using your
voice as well. I speak to a lot of people
that can't always advocate for themselves because they're not at
that point yet, having a loved one next to them
or a friend or someone else that can be like, Hey,
that's crisis, that's what that is.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
That's you know, it's really special to someone.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
I love it. And then, last, but not least, if
you could send one message to our listeners who may
be grappling with a new diagnosis of their own, what
would that message be.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Well, you're not alone, which was a wonderful thing for
me to find out. There's a whole community out there
in whichever way you need it. Wherever you are in
that journey, there are people ready to put their arms
around you and tell you it's okay, share information that
they've learned, share a good day, share a bad day.
It's whether you want to share your skin or you
just want to kind of learn about your skin.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Get online. There's people waiting for you.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
I love it. Le Ane Hunter, you were a delight.
Thank you again for sharing your story with us today
and with the world in general in very public ways.
I know that's not always your comfort zone, but it
really makes a huge difference, and you are showing everyone
they are not alone. So thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
Thanks that.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
All Our Skin is hosted by myself, Holly Frye, and
executive produced and engineered by Ryan Martz. Our executive producer
(36:10):
and writer is Meredith Barnes. If you enjoy the show,
share it with your friends. You can also listen and
follow on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Ruby.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm Holly Fry and this is season two of Our Skin,
a personal discovery podcast. Today we are super thrilled to
welcome Leanne Hunter to Our Skin. Leanne is a very
passionate soriasis advocate and the co founder of a particular
(00:32):
project within the Get Your Skin Out movement, and this
is dedicated to making ciasis visible but also beautiful. And
the photographs that are part of this project are so
spectacularly gorgeous. You don't just get your skin out, you
blow people away with how beautiful it is. And through
her work, Leanne has built a community where showing your
(00:52):
skin is, yes, an act of bravery, but more than that,
it is an act of connection. And we're going to
learn more about Leanne first, and then we're going to
step back into history to discover the story of a
man named Josh White, who is a blues guitarist who
siriasis manifested primarily on his hands, which is something that,
as we'll learn, Leanne can relate to and also, as
(01:14):
you can imagine, made that a tricky proposition for a career.
So Leanne, thank you so much for being on Our Skin.
We're so happy to have you.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
I want to start with your overall experience, because you
were diagnosed really quite young. When did you, as a
kid realize, oh, this is my life, like this is
something I have to manage for a prolonged period of time.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I was diagnosed when I was five, so I don't
really remember life without zorasis. Thinking back, I have a
sister who's a year younger than me, and there was
kind of points of difference as we were growing up
in that bedtime. For example, being quite young, I'm running
around the house trying to find my more, my dad,
my sister, somebody to put cream on my back so
I could go to bed, because it was part of
(01:56):
the kind of daily routine and that didn't have to
help him for my so obviously we were a little bit.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Different growing up.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
There was a couple of like comments from younger children
around you know, why do you have corn flakes which
is a breakfast cereal whit? You know, I you have
corn flakes in your hair like I witsor isis and
kind of seeing that somebody didn't really understand what that was.
But I think it was probably when we got to
the teen years and I had more of an understanding
(02:24):
and more of a kind of grasp on like treatment
cycles and things like that I was like, Okay, this
is not going away.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I need to get under the skin of this and
figure it out.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
And there was an event that happened to you when
you were a teen where you were at a swimming
pool and having a flare and someone asked.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
You to leave.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Correct, Yeah, that's right because they thought you had something contagious.
They didn't understand. Yeah, that had to have been so
incredibly gutting. The teen years have their own traps for
somebody that has no additional stressors to deal with, how
did you handle that as a young person and do
you still run into those of incidence?
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah, So it was actually the lifeguard that pulled me out,
which was the most frustrating thing about the situation, because
the particular swim pool that we were in had been
built for like the Commonwealth Games, and there was the
whole kind of thing around inclusivity, and so they really
should have known and yeah, you're right, thirteen, you do
(03:21):
not want to be stood on a.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Pool side or for anything.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I have a really small sister in the water that
I'm trying to like grapple out with me, and to me,
I was like, no, I'd never been accused of being
contagious before as well, so I think I was a
bit shocked and I was like, no, it's just crisis,
and like quite innocently saying it's just crisis, and there
was no recognition what the condition was and a lot
of resistance. Well regardless they think you contagiously, You've got
(03:47):
to get out, and by that point I was like,
I just need to disappear. I think the situation wouldn't
happen in that way now in this day and age
because of the awareness. I think it probably if it
happened now, would stammer around a lot more like I
am not getting out.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
It was tough, but you know.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
It does still happen now occasionally, not the contagious thing.
But I have an eight year old boy, and when
he was born, I was determined to getting the poll
within regardless of how bad mycerisis was, and he is
the best distraction on any given day. There's so much
innocence in children that I have had kind of parents
(04:24):
pull children away it's particularly bad. And there was a
particular situation so Oscar kind of he's grown up, just
really accepting what it is, and like there's a real
curious nature to the way he approaches it. And he
I don't think he saw this woman pull away, but
perfect time, and he's kind of come over and started
kissing the patches and saying like, oh yeah, oh, she's
a saw And this woman that had pulled a child
(04:47):
away was just watching and observing. And then she actually
came back over and was like, I'm really sorry I
kind of pulled away with fear.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Would you mind telling me what that is? A sawy
little boy kissing it?
Speaker 1 (04:58):
And so that for me was like a really nice
because I think sometimes with awareness, you don't know, some
people sometimes need that prompting.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
But the fact that she could backtrack and then, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
That was a nice teaching for her child as well,
to kind of demonstrate Okay, well I didn't know.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Now I'm trying to understand, and we open the conversation.
So it was nice.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I like that you have accidentally raised ask her to
be an advocate for people to understand better.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I also want to talk about your experience with the
medical community, because you were diagnosed when you were very
very young, but a lot has really changed in terms
of treatment and education of both doctors and patients. What
has your experience been, because a lot of guests tell
us that self advocacy becomes the biggest part of it.
Sometimes you have to go to many doctors and explain
(05:43):
it over and over, which puts a lot of burden
on the patient to be an educator as well as
someone that needs help. Will you tell us what that
part of your journey's been like.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
I think you're right, it has really changed over time,
but it's also really dependent on the individual that you see,
whether that's a doctor or dem ptologists. And I can
only speak from the UK because I've grown up through
that healthcare system. You know, you get seven minutes with
a doctor to try and explain something that impacts every
aspect of your life, and they're very much only treating
(06:14):
the kind of physical condition and it's so much more so.
I think for a long time I was told it's
a skin condition, you just need to creamy plaques, and
you know, here's some treatment that will help with the
plaque thing, and then it has to get to a
certain point. There's only some treatments in the new it's
a real struggle to get referred to the next level,
(06:36):
which is a dermatologist who hold the keys to a
lot more information and a lot more treatments. And you
can wait a year to get to that point, trying
failing treatments. Then you get to the dermatology, you've got
fifteen minutes. You'll hit with a lot of very medical questions.
And I'm not a medical person. I don't really clearly
don't understand a lot about my condition, which is why
(06:56):
I've come to you, and it can be quite intimidating,
so I mean, and I've had it since I was five.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
So once my mum.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Handed over the reigns of treatment, it was a kind
of really uphill learning curve as to how to get
a grip of those appointments to get the right outcome
for me, Like sharing.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
My journey online and learning.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
From other people the outcomes of their appointments was a
real turning point for me because there's a whole lot
of knowledge from other people and that was something that
I then was felt quite passionately about sharing with other
people as well, how to empower themselves with those appointments
to make sure they're getting the best out of it,
to make sure they're asking the right questions to kind
of put the other pieces of the puzzle together, so
(07:38):
we're not just talking about the scabs on the skin.
What else is impacting you? What else can you put
on these kind of questionnaires? How else can you take
hold of your autoimmune disease and treat it as one
versus just that and put that back to the dermatologist
and the medical practitioner so they can help guide that
as well.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Amazing, you share something in common with our historical figure
that we're talking about today, which is psoriasis often appearing
on your hands. That is a place where it's really visible.
So you have that whole problem of people not understanding,
but also that has to make your day to day
just excruciating because there's nothing we're not doing with our
(08:21):
hands all day long. How do you handle that? And
is that the hardest place for you to have a
flare or are there others that are kind of contenders
for the worst.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Definitely the hardest, Yeah, because it's also very unpredictable. So ironically,
if I can get all of my other services under control,
my nails will be there to remind me that it
is still here. I have not had a nail flare
for a good few years. But you're right, you can't
hide it. You know, if it's bad on my arm
and I don't feel confident to show it, I put
cardigan on. You can't really do anything with you nails.
You can't put nail varnish on when it's flaring. It
(08:52):
really disfigures them. I work in a corporate environment. When
I first started out, there's a lot of handshakes a
clientstead of like, no, I don't want to share your hand,
and like really simple things like keyboards never used to
be so touch sensitive, so you had to really press
on a keyboard, which was so painful, and you're expected
to work.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
At speed, and like, I can't dipe it's really sore.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
So there was that, and then I think probably the
worst time where I was most aware of it was
when I had my little boy.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
And you don't realize how much you do with your hands.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
And I've got this tiny little baby, we're out and
about the nails were really disfigured and just hanging off
the fingers and I'm trying to feed him in public
or I'm trying to pick him up, and it's just overwhelming.
On its own without then people kind of staring at
your fingers and you get funny looks about that. And
(09:43):
then there's been a few times where shop assistants won't
take the coins out of your hand because there'll be
too busy staring at your nails and you're like, can
I pay for this drink?
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Or and they'll say you put the money on the side.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Early adopter of Apple Pay, h wear a lot of gloves.
I also want to talk to you, of course about
Get your Skin Out, because there are a lot of
people that experience what you do and they don't then
get involved in a global effort to educate and raise
awareness and also improve acceptance. So what made you think like, yeah,
(10:19):
I need to be part of that.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Holly Dylan is the founder of Getting Skinned Out. I
met Holly at the beginning of our kind of online
sirrisis journeys. We did another campaign together, and I mean,
she is a complete trailblazer and I had kind of
started out my journey trying to seek information and look
for other people that were like me, and I'd met
(10:41):
Holly online. Then we came together and I was like, Wow,
you have the same passion as me, but We're very different,
like she's a total extrovert, but we both had this
kind of mission where we wanted to demystify the condition.
We had such a good grip on our condition and
we were not shy to show you our skin and
it was all coming.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
We wanted to have.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Better days with ours crisis, and we wanted to make
sure that everyone living with it felt comfortable enough to
just do what they wanted to do. So she had
just launched the campaign. She is so happy to get
in front of the camera. I'm more of a behind
the camera kind of person, like I will sit in
the DMS and I will offer all of the support
that I can, which she's happy to strip down and
get on the billboard. But we also wanted to bring
(11:23):
people together and kind of have those conversations that we
needed to have, but people were always too scared to
have them. So we brought nutritionists and I think at
one of the events we had like a sex therapist
and like really have those open, brave conversations that touch
on every impact of your life that crisis can touch
and just go here, go like this is everything.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Like here we are on a billboard. We're doing it today.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
You might not want to do it, but eventually you're
going to see that you can get involved in this
and it's okay, and you can go to the beach
and have a servissa. Someone is going to know what
it is. So I think that was the driving force
behind it, and it still is now.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah, it's so cool. It's like literally a world changing
movement at this point, which is amazing. So congratulations. You
kind of touched on this, but I want to talk
a little bit more about community because of course that
is a big part of get your Skin out, but
you have also built your own community online. What has
having that kind of community meant to you personally?
Speaker 3 (12:20):
It's been such a good support system.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
I think the reason why I started was to share
what I was learning, but also to find other people
that kind of were going through it the way that
I was. And it can be quite an isolating condition,
and so if I was finding one two other people
that were living with what I was living with, then
you know you're not alone. The community built quite quickly,
(12:44):
so I was like, this is great, and I've got
loads of friends.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Now.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
A lot does happen behind the scenes, and a lot
happens in the DMS, and I think that's a really
important part because the way that I approached the risis,
in the way that I put it out into the community.
I am very comfortable and confident with having it because
I've had it for thirty five years, so it's.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Not a new conversation for me. But the community has.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Like a whole host of people who have either just
had it or they've always lived with it but been
too a shame to even talk about it.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
And there's something so special in.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Creating a place where whether you are two days in
or thirty five years in, you can breathe and you
can be like, oh, Okay, you just get it and
I need particular advice on this area, or I just
need to share a bad day in this area, and
it's yeah, it's really special.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
You also had some really impressive foundational support from your family,
and you've said before that your parents always told you
be aware of your psoriasis, but don't let it consume you,
which is pretty incredible advice from a parent. How have
you put that advice into practice in your own life.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
There's a really famous saying, fake it till you make it,
And it's a journey right every day is a journey.
I think there's like a kind of bigger perspective. If
I didn't have CIRISIS, I would have something else that
was potentially adding to a list of insecurities that I
have in my day. So quite early on, after this
women pool incident, after various other things, you can feel
(14:14):
yourself pulling back, and then you have to make a
decision is crisis is going to define me? Or am
I going to define how I live with cirisis. That
was kind of the thinking. And then I find the
community and it's almost once I'd created that and I'd said, look,
I'm going to live confidently with this condition.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
I have to show up every day.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
And do that now because I can't feel like, oh guys,
I don't feel that way anymore. So there is, to
an extent, there's an element of faking soil you make it.
And I do have bad days, That's what I say.
I don't, but every bad day there's also been a
good day, and I wouldn't be sat here without it,
So there is a lot to be grateful for. I
wouldn't have connected with Holly and all the other people
in the community.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
So yeah, I just keep faking. So you make it.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
I love it, and now you are, of course also
a mom who you talked about your little way earlier.
What were those conversations like initially, when did he start
to get the discussion of what it was that you
had and what it meant, and what was like the
main thing that you really wanted him to understand about it.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
I don't remember at what point it became like a
specific discussion. He just kind of grew up aware of it.
And you know, we've had to give it different names
until he was old enough to understand it's crisis and
now I can explain what it is on a top
line level. But he used to call it out cheese,
and he understood that some days it would be quite sore,
but it was nothing to worry about.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Because if he got a cut, I've got the same ouching.
I'm like, yeah, kind of a bit different.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
The most important thing was to kind of give him
the language, whether that was like physical language or like
verbal language, to approach things like kindly and curiously, because
when I was younger, like, there was a tendency for
someone to start the curious conversation by saying, ooh, what's that?
And I'm so triggered by the word ooh yeah, because
(16:00):
it's like, well, it's not it's orrisis, it's a natural
thing if you don't really understand. So I think any
parenting journey and understanding the innocence of a child's mind
and you are what you teach them. So it was
really important to tell him mummy's a little bit different,
but everybody has something that's different and it's something to
(16:20):
be celebrated. And he's so accepting of that now that
it's he will see other people and be like, oh my,
you know, my mummy has something like this, and it's
such a smile and such a it's so open and
it's so innocent, like, you know, let me learn, let
me make you feel better, and let me relate to you.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
So yeah, that was the main thing.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
That's incredible, Leanne. I know you've said that you're shy
and you don't really like to be in public, but
you are an absolute gem and you are a great communicator.
So thank you so much for sharing your story. We
are going to take a step back in time and
we will dive into a really astonishing partnership between a
musician who needed a solution to save his hands and
the company that made that solution possible. Do that in
(17:00):
just a minute, All right, are you ready for some
history talk? So Josh White, the hero of our story,
(17:20):
was born on February eleventh, nineteen fourteen, in Greenville, South Carolina,
and he did not have an easy start in life.
First of all, this was, of course, firmly in the
era of Jim Crow racism, and the White family was black.
His father was institutionalized, and he was still very very young,
and kind of to help make ends meet, Josh fell
(17:41):
into this work guiding blind street musicians all across the South.
And while he was doing this job, he picked up
some guitar skills on his travels, and it turned out
that Josh was a really great musician, and so by
his early teens he was already making music history. He
worked primarily along side musician that was very well known
(18:02):
named Blind Joe Taggert, and he became one of the
youngest black session artists ever recorded in history. At the time,
Josh was primarily performing things like religious and gospel music,
along with some very secular blues, but his range was
really really vast. Later, he ended up on Broadway in
a nineteen forty production of John Henry with Paul Robison,
(18:25):
who just ten years before that had broken centuries of
tradition by becoming the first black performer to play Othello,
a part written as a black man in London. It
ran for almost three hundred performances. But all of this
history making was really just the beginning of Josh's story,
because in nineteen forty four, when he was thirty, White's
(18:47):
rendition of a song called One Meatball became a major
commercial success. It made him one of the first blackmail
artists to sell more than a million records. And to
just describe this song, one Meatball, you can listen to it.
It's so easy to find online, and it's a humorous
ballad about a very poor man who has fifteen cents
(19:07):
and he's in a restaurant and all he can afford
to order is one meatball. There's a great refrain where
it's like one meatball, no spaghetti, and I love it.
It's so good, ironically, since pasta is much cheaper than meat.
But that's a whole nother story. One Meatball, Liam, I
would sing the blues. I need more than that.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
I would take the spaghetti.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
She's like, I'll take the spaghetti her fifteen cents will
buy it, so me, it's not good for the risis, right,
this is good advice. But here's the thing. This wasn't
just a hit song that's very catchy, although it is that.
It was also a huge breakthrough because it shattered barriers
in an industry where that kind of recognition was very
rarely given to black musicians. So I want to take
(19:49):
us back for a moment to the music industry in
nineteen forty four. At this point, recording studios and musicians
unions are all segregated. Radio is almost entirely white. Black
artists that did get to record were restricted to selling
what were called race records. That basically meant that only
(20:09):
black customers were marketed to. With those, they certainly did
not get airplay, which of course is the way we
all know that music gets sold and makes money and
gets attention. That was your pathway to having a hit song.
So the question arises of how did Josh manage to
do this? How did he break through? And this is
my favorite part of his story, or one of my
(20:30):
favorite parts of his story. I have a lot It
was something that was called Cafe Society, and it was
a nightclub, and Josh shared the stage there with music icons,
so we're talking Billie Holliday and Lena Horn. Some of
them sang their most iconic songs there for the first time.
And this place was really really special because it was
located in a white neighborhood here in New York Greenwich Village.
(20:52):
It was actually on Sheridan Square in the West Village.
It is widely recognized today as the first integrated nightclub,
and I say that today, but it was purpose built
to be that at the time as well. So at
this point, black performers had of course been performing for
white audiences, but it tended to be either a white
audience or a black audience. The audience was not mixed
(21:14):
ever in the US until Cafe Society, and then both
the lineup of musicians was mixed and the audience was integrated.
Had you ever heard of Cafe Society before? It sounds
like a very cool spot, and it really was an
interesting thing. There's a little bit of a historical jab
at another person in its setup. So the owner of
Cafe Society was this man named Barney Josephson. He was
(21:37):
the youngest of six kids in a lot via the
American family, and he didn't know anything about restaurants or
hospitality when he started Cafe Society. His previous experience was
all in shoe stores. But he loved jazz and he
would go to jazz clubs all over New York. He
often went to the Cotton Club, and what he noticed
(21:58):
was that there was this racial disparity going on and
that some of the best musicians were not getting seen
by anybody because even in clubs in Harlem, like the
Cotton Club, they had to be relegated to like the
back part of the club. And so he was like,
I need to bring these people in front of more
eyes and an integrated audience. But this is the Jab.
So at the time, Claire Booth, loose well known writer,
(22:20):
had coined the term cafe society to talk about fancy
pants people who had a higher esthetic understanding and they
would go to cafes and that was cafe society. And
he's like, no, I'm calling my bar cafe Society, and
anybody can come and it's not about high falutin anything.
Everybody's welcome, which is pretty amazing. If you're going to
insult somebody, do it with purpose. And this place was
(22:42):
a huge hit. Barney's music advisor and his talent scout,
who is named John Hammond, introduced Josh to Barney and
they hit it off. This is kind of a cute
story as well, because Barney had some notes for Josh
because even though his Cafe Society was open to everyone,
he recognized that the patrons there had a very sophisticated
(23:02):
understanding of what was and was not good music. So
he was like, you have to play to my audience.
And so that demure nice boy that was doing gospel
in a press suit gone. Now Josh started wearing this
black velvet shirt that was unbuttoned all the way down
to his belly button and silk slacks. He was definitely
getting his skin out. That is a nightclub outfit, and
(23:24):
it actually became his signature.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Look.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
That's what he was known for when he performed at
Cafe Society for years as a solo act, until of
course nineteen forty four when the Amazing one Meatball hit
and then he started transitioning to national and international tours.
He was just not an entertainer though, because he was
also a voice for change. He became known as a
(23:46):
powerful protest singer. He sang songs that addressed labor issues,
housing inequality, racism. He used his voice for good and
a lot of these songs were written by a man
named Bob Miller. If you know a lot about folk
music and protest music, you know his name. He was
very outwardly and publicly a leftist, and some of these
songs were so provocative that white radio stations, particularly in
(24:10):
the Deep South, refused to play them because they thought
they were in sandiary. How dare you ask for fair
labor wages? Then, of course, during the McCarthy era, this
activism and being associated with leftists came at a price
for Josh. He was blacklisted and that pretty much put
an end to his career as far as a performer.
But he was very smart he found his way around it.
(24:31):
So even in the face of this sort of public persecution,
he influenced music through a couple of instructional works. One
of them was the Josh White Guitar Method. You're a Guitarist,
You've heard of this before. It's considered the first blues
guitar instruction book ever. And then his next venture, which
was the Josh White Songbook, was also a huge hit,
and these publications helped shape the folk revival both in
(24:54):
the US and the UK. Do you ever listen to
folk music?
Speaker 3 (24:58):
No?
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Really, I guarantee they all listen to Josh White. But
this is where our story kind of takes a dramatic turn,
because in nineteen sixty one, he was just forty seven
years old, White's body really started to fail him in
a variety of ways. So he actually suffered multiple heart attacks,
he was diagnosed with progressive heart disease, he had chronic emphysema,
(25:18):
and he had ulcers, the whole bag of stuff. But
perhaps most devastating for a guitarist was the fact that
he developed severe psoriasis that attacked his hands. This is
going to sound so familiar to you because it caused
painful peeling and devastating nail damage. So trying to do
anything with nails that are coming off and cracked is
(25:40):
very painful. Now imagine doing that playing blues guitar and
trying to get through a concert. So basically just had
hands that were a bloody mess after every time he performed.
And this wasn't, of course, just discomfort, as I'm sure
you know, it was agonizing. Can you imagine what that's
like as a performer, it.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Must have been like a cheese great to Yeah, at
the end of you.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Is like I feel like every time I've mucked around
with the guitar, which is not much. I have no skills,
but like they hurt my little Lily White delicate hand.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Well it helps me just tell you says, yes, there's
the physical aspect, but it must have been so frustrating
because it's then holding back from doing something that he loves,
which I imagine, you know, if he was stubborn like
I can be.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
It's like one and this is not going to stop me.
You make it worse.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
And then it's also your livelihood on the line, so
that's an added stressor which can cause flairs. White's manager
Lenn Rosenfeld actually noted in interviews that starting in the
early nineteen fifties, White's performances increasingly required a lot of
pain mitigation, and this really underscores how debilitating this condition
had become foreign artist whose livelihood depended entirely on his fingers.
(26:47):
In the mid nineteen sixties, White's ability to play guitar
was seriously deteriorated and looking really dicey. There was this
incredible collaboration that started with a company called Ovation Guitars
was a musical venture that spun out of Cayman Aircraft
that was named for the engineer, Chris Caman. He was
himself an accomplished guitarist and he also loved music, and
(27:11):
he started Ovation signature guitar that had a design that
featured this parabolic round back body that was made from
ly record, which is a synthetic aerospace derived composite. It's
engineered for projection and resonance. When an aerospace engineer decides
to address music, you get really cool things. And so,
according to both the Ovation original program and Ovation's archival histories,
(27:35):
White actually sought help from Ovation when his psoriasis made
it almost impossible to play guitar. So he described what
he was going through, this potentially career ending pain. A
unique scenario for someone to have to self advocate, not
quite like going to a doctor. But this is a
weird thing because you talk about how people don't hear
you or understand, and in this case, all of these
(27:58):
engineers were like, all right, how do we solve this problem?
Which is pretty impressive, and the solution that emerged was
seriously ingenious Ovation's subassembly foreman, a man named al Gleambowski,
made a cast of White's hands and fingers, and he
produced fiberglass prosthetic nails. So these artificial nails were glued
(28:19):
on with an adhesive that at the time was known
as Eastman nine ten. Today we know it as super glue.
So White actually started going back to this factory once
every couple of months to get his new nails put on,
and this really enabled him to continue his career. He
got to keep touring and recording even though he had
this condition. And in case you were wondering, commercially available
(28:40):
press on nails did come out around this same time.
Although like don't don't use superglue, don't son only under
an engineer's supervision. You are a manicure gal. I can't
imagine trying to strumic guitar with nails that were not
firmly attached to my hand. Thus the super glue has
that ever helped you to put on nails when your
nail dicey? Or is it a calculation because I know
(29:03):
you said it can actually harm them.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
The tricky galance between what I want to look good
and what I want to feel good, so we'll see.
I imagine sticking those on and him trying to play
with a real adjustment as well, though, because you're not
going to have the same feeling.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Their collaboration did not stop there, though, because he inspired
them in turn, and from nineteen sixty six to nineteen
sixty seven, Ovation created a guitar called the Josh White Model.
It was their first signature guitar, and it was the
first ever signature instrument made by a US company for
a black artist. So think about that. This was nineteen
(29:36):
sixty six before we got any such thing, and in
an era when black artists and black musicians were still
facing enormous barriers of recognition. This collaboration wasn't just cool.
It carried a lot of profound symbolic weight. And the
official debut of these guitars was like an event. It
was spectacular. On November fourteenth, nineteen sixty six, at the
(29:58):
Hotel America in Hartford, Connecticut, about three hundred press and
industry representatives all showed up. They gathered to witness history.
White appeared. He played for thirty minutes, so they got
like the coolest private concert ever and displayed this instrument's clarity,
its projection, its sustained, that's resonance. And then he finished
with a really special performance. His two daughters came and
(30:20):
joined him and they did a song together which is
very very sweet. And this partnership between Josh and Ovation
Guitars was just such a win win. Obviously it benefited Josh,
but the collaboration also benefited them because to have the
world's greatest guitarist bring visibility to your roundback design, which
was an emerging technology, is not a bad way to
kick off a launch. And with this new guitar, this
(30:42):
Ovation guitar and his prosthetic fingernails, Josh was back in business.
His later career was marked by a lot of really
impressive feats. He made a lot of television appearances that
really showcased his enduring talent as well as his international appeal.
He appeared to overseas many times. He was on The
Murph Griffin Show, on Hugh Hefner's Playboy Penthouse, He was
on a show called Hooton Nanny that used to be
(31:04):
really popular, as well as others. He also starred in
a concert special for national Swedish television in nineteen sixty
two and then In nineteen sixty five, he starred on
the ITV network special which was called Heart Song Josh
White in the United Kingdom with guest artist Julie Felix
and Alexis Comer. So he was in your home zone
(31:24):
for a bit. He has a number of things that
go wrong after this. He had an automobile accident in
nineteen sixty six, but he did recover and he did
appear as a guest star in nineteen sixty seven on
Canada's CBCTV program Let's Sing Out with Oscar Brand. These
appearances really showed that even though his health was not great,
his voice, his skill as a performer, and just this
(31:47):
magnetic presence he had really remained as powerful as ever.
His final appearance was in May of nineteen sixty nine
on the Canadian TV show One More Time, and just
a few months after that last performance, which was on
September fifth, sixty nine, he died while he was having
surgery for heart valve replacement in a Manhasset, Long Island hospital.
He was only fifty four. I'm fifty four. That's troubling,
(32:11):
But like what he did for music, even if you
don't know his name, you have enjoyed his legacy in
a variety of ways. The ripple effects of his life
they still linger. He had a huge influence in the
UK and in the US on folk revival. So people
like Pete Seeger, Joan Bias, Bob Dylan Odetta, Stefan Grossman,
(32:32):
John Renbourn, all of them have acknowledged Josh White and
his instructional works and style as being significant influences. And
he really adapted within the bounds of his psoriasis so
he could keep doing this thing that he loved. And
his collaboration with ovation presents us with this really beautiful story, right,
a celebrated artist confronting a debilitating condition, finding the right
(32:56):
people who would listen, people who paid attention, and then
put all of their heart, art and expertise and intellect
into finding a solution for his siasis, pain and discomfort.
But here's the thing. This is a very feel good story,
but Josh assoriasis was not being treated by all of this.
They had found a way through, but he still really
was dealing with a lot of rough times in terms
(33:17):
of what treatment and relief were available in the nineteen sixties.
The knowledge that sariasis is in fact an autoimmune disorder
and not just a skin thing that you put cream on.
Was just coming into focus when Josh died, So it
would have been a different world for him. If he
had had access to a lot of the sophisticated medications
that we have today, like biologics that have been developed since,
(33:40):
he could have had a completely different career, although it
wouldn't have worked out for Ovation Guitar maybe as well.
But on our skin, we know that finding that right
team to support you, whether that is doctors or your family,
or a subassembly foreman at a guitar company or an
online community becomes just incredibly essential. And we need community.
All of us need community to feel seen, and we
(34:01):
need to hear each other's stories and to understand that
we are not alone. That's been something you've talked about
and literally every single one of our guests has referenced
that we all need this community. I sure hope Josh
felt supported. I love this story so much standing Ovation
to Ovation Guitars. But now we get to pivot back
to you, Lean because I have two more questions. We
(34:23):
ask these at the end of all of our shows
to all of our guests, but it's important and especially
for people that are new to the siasis community or
trying to understand it. So the first one is what
suggestions do you have for people who maybe don't have
psoriasis themselves, but they love someone who does and they
want to be helpful and supportive.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
I think stay curious, and there's power in using your
voice as well. I speak to a lot of people
that can't always advocate for themselves because they're not at
that point yet, having a loved one next to them
or a friend or someone else that can be like, Hey,
that's crisis, that's what that is.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
That's you know, it's really special to someone.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
I love it. And then, last, but not least, if
you could send one message to our listeners who may
be grappling with a new diagnosis of their own, what
would that message be.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Well, you're not alone, which was a wonderful thing for
me to find out. There's a whole community out there
in whichever way you need it. Wherever you are in
that journey, there are people ready to put their arms
around you and tell you it's okay, share information that
they've learned, share a good day, share a bad day.
It's whether you want to share your skin or you
just want to kind of learn about your skin.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Get online. There's people waiting for you.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
I love it. Le Ane Hunter, you were a delight.
Thank you again for sharing your story with us today
and with the world in general in very public ways.
I know that's not always your comfort zone, but it
really makes a huge difference, and you are showing everyone
they are not alone. So thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
Thanks that.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
All Our Skin is hosted by myself, Holly Frye, and
executive produced and engineered by Ryan Martz. Our executive producer
(36:10):
and writer is Meredith Barnes. If you enjoy the show,
share it with your friends. You can also listen and
follow on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
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