50 facts about musician Jack White

50 things you missed about Jack White, musician, record producer, and occasional actor.

1. Jack White is an American musician, record producer, and occasional actor.

2. Jack White is best known as the lead singer and guitarist of The White Stripes, although he has had success in other bands and as a solo artist.

3. On April 24, 2012, White released his debut solo album, Blunderbuss.

4. His second studio album, Lazaretto, was released on June 10, 2014. Both received wide commercial and critical acclaim.

5. After moonlighting in several underground Detroit bands as a drummer, White founded The White Stripes with fellow Detroit native-and then wife-Meg White in 1997. Their 2001 breakthrough album, White Blood Cells, brought them international fame with the hit single and accompanying music video, "Fell in Love with a Girl".

6. In 2006, White founded The Raconteurs with Brendan Benson, and in 2009 founded The Dead Weather with Alison Mosshart of The Kills.

7. White has enjoyed consistent critical and popular success, and is widely credited as one of the key artists in the garage rock revival of the 2000s.

8. He has won eight Grammy Awards, and both of his solo albums have reached number one on the Billboard charts.

9. Rolling Stone ranked him number 70 on its 2010 list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

10. White has an extensive collection of guitars and other instruments, and has a preference for vintage items that often have connections to famous blues artists.

11. He is a vocal advocate for analog technology and recording techniques, and he is a board member of the Library of Congress' National Recording Preservation Foundation.

12. His record label and studio Third Man Records releases vinyl recordings of his own work, as well as that of other artists and local school children.

13. His latest album holds the record for most first-week vinyl sales since 1991.

14. Jack White values his privacy and has been known to create misdirection about his personal life; he has been called "eccentric."

15. He and Meg divorced in 2000.

16. He married the model and singer Karen Elson in 2005, though they divorced in 2013. Together, they have a son and daughter.

17. He currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee.

18. John Anthony Gillis was born in Detroit, Michigan, the youngest of ten children-and the seventh son-of Teresa (née Bandyk) and Gorman M. Gillis.

19. His mother's family was Polish, while his father was of Scottish-Canadian descent.

20. He was raised a Catholic, and his father and mother both worked for the Archdiocese of Detroit (as the Building Maintenance Superintendent and secretary in the Cardinal's office, respectively).

21. Gillis became an altar boy, which landed him an uncredited role in the 1987 movie The Rosary Murders, filmed mainly at Holy Redeemer parish in southwest Detroit.

22. Gillis' early musical influences were inherited from his older brothers, and he learned to play the instruments they abandoned.

23. He began playing the drums in the first grade after finding a kit in the attic.

24. As a child, he was a fan of classical music, but in elementary school, he began listening to the Doors, Pink Floyd, and Led Zeppelin.

25. As a "shorthaired [teenager] with braces," Gillis began listening to the blues and 1960s rock that would influence him in The White Stripes, with Son House and Blind Willie McTell being among his favorite blues guitarists.

26. He has said in interviews that Son House's "Grinnin' In Your Face" is his favorite song of all time.

27. As a drummer, his heroes include Gene Krupa, Stewart Copeland, and Crow Smith from Flat Duo Jets.

28. In 2005 on 60 Minutes, he told Mike Wallace that his life could have turned out differently. "I'd got accepted to a seminary in Wisconsin, and I was gonna become a priest, but at the last second I thought, 'I'll just go to public school.' I had just gotten a new amplifier in my bedroom, and I didn't think I was allowed to take it with me."

29. Instead, he got accepted into the famed Cass Technical High School as a business major, and played the drums and trombone in the band.

30. At 15, he began a three-year upholstery apprenticeship with a family friend, Brian Muldoon.

31. He credits Muldoon with exposing him to punk music as they worked together in the shop. Muldoon goaded his young apprentice into forming a band: "He played drums", Gillis thought. "Well I guess I'll play guitar then." The two recorded an album, Makers of High Grade Suites, as the Upholsterers.

32. As a senior in high school, he met Megan White at the Memphis Smoke restaurant where she worked, and they frequented the coffee shops, local music venues, and record stores of the area. After a courtship, they got married on September 21, 1996. In a reversal of tradition, he took her last name.

33. After completing his apprenticeship, he started a one-man business of his own, Third Man Upholstery. The slogan of his business was "Your Furniture's Not Dead" and the color scheme was yellow and black-including a yellow van, a yellow-and-black uniform, and a yellow clipboard.

34. Although Third Man Upholstery never lacked business, he claims it was unprofitable due to his complacency about money and his business practices that were perceived as unprofessional, including making bills out in crayon and writing poetry inside the furniture.

35. At 19 years old, Jack had landed his first professional gig as the drummer for the Detroit band Goober & the Peas, and was still in that position when the band broke up in 1996.

36. Despite being married, Jack and Meg publicly presented themselves as siblings, and keeping to a chromatic theme, dressed only in red, white, and black.

37. On January 30, 2012 White released "Love Interruption" as the first single off his debut, self-produced solo album, Blunderbuss, which was released on April 24, 2012.

38. In support of the album, he appeared on Saturday Night Live as the musical guest and played at select festivals during the summer of 2012, including the Firefly Music Festival, Radio 1's Hackney Weekend, the Sasquatch! Music Festival, the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan (one of the biggest festivals in the world), and Rock Werchter in Belgium. Later in the year, he headlined Austin City Limits Music Festival.

39. On April 1, 2014, White announced his second solo album, Lazaretto, inspired by plays and poetry he had written as a teen.

40. White has also had a minor acting career.

41. He appeared in the 2003 film Cold Mountain as a character named Georgia and performed five songs for the Cold Mountain soundtrack: "Sittin' on Top of the World", "Wayfaring Stranger", "Never Far Away", "Christmas Time Soon Will Be Over" and "Great High Mountain."

42. The 2003 Jim Jarmusch film Coffee and Cigarettes featured both Jack and Meg in the segment "Jack Shows Meg His Tesla Coil."

43. He also played Elvis Presley in the 2007 satire Walk Hard.

44. White founded Third Man Records in 2001. However, it was not until after he moved to Nashville that White purchased a space in 2009 to house his label.

45. White owns many instruments and, historically, has tended to use certain ones for specific projects or in certain settings.

46. He has a preference for vintage guitars, many of which are associated with influential blues artists.

47. Much of his equipment is custom-made, for both technical and aesthetic reasons.

48. White has long been a proponent of analog equipment and the associated working methods.

49. Beginning in the fifth grade, he and his childhood friend, Dominic Suchyta, would listen to records in White's attic on weekends and began to record cover songs on an old four-track reel to reel tape machine.

50. White has provided financial support to institutions in his hometown of Detroit. In 2009, White donated almost $170,000 towards the renovation of the baseball diamond in southwest Detroit's Clark Park.

Source: Wikipedia.org