Lari White

Lari White
White in 2014
Background information
Birth name	Lari Michele White
Born	(1965-05-13)May 13, 1965 Dunedin, Florida, U.S.
Died	January 23, 2018(2018-01-23) (aged 52) Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.
Genres	Country
Occupations	Singer-songwriter Record producer Actress
Instruments	Vocals Guitar Piano
Years active	1988–2017
Labels	Capitol RCA Nashville Lyric Street Skinny White Girl
Website	lariwhite.com

Lari Michele White Cannon (/ˈlɑːri/, LAH-ree; May 13, 1965 – January 23, 2018) was an American country music singer-songwriter and actress. She gained national attention in 1988 as a winner on You Can Be a Star, a talent competition on the former The Nashville Network (TNN). After an unsuccessful stint on Capitol Records, she recorded four albums for RCA Records Nashville and one for the defunct Lyric Street Records between 1993 and 1999. Her most commercially successful album was 1994's Wishes, which charted three top-ten hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts: "That's My Baby", "Now I Know", and "That's How You Know (When You're in Love)".

She has also produced albums for Toby Keith and Billy Dean, and has written singles for Danny Gokey and Sarah Buxton. In addition to her singing and songwriting career, she has acted in movies and her own cabaret production, My First Affair. White was also married to songwriter Chuck Cannon until her death from peritoneal cancer in 2018.

Biography

Lari Michele White was born May 13, 1965, in Dunedin, Florida. Her parents, Larry and Yvonne White, were both school teachers. As a child, she sang in her family's gospel group, The White Family Singers. This group included both parents along with her sister, Natasha, and brother, Torne. White sang at talent contests, and performed in a local rock band called White Sound. She studied vocals and music engineering at the University of Miami's Frost School of Music., from which she graduated in 1987. During her college years, she composed and performed in local clubs. She was a classmate of The Mavericks' Paul Deakin. White made her first national appearance in 1988 on the talent show You Can Be a Star on The Nashville Network (TNN); she won first prize, including a recording contract with Capitol Records. She released one single through Capitol titled "Flying Above the Rain", which she wrote with Lisa Silver. When it failed to chart, White was dropped from Capitol's roster without releasing anything else. Despite this, White continued to focus on songwriting, which led to Tammy Wynette cutting her song "Where's the Fire?" in 1990. She also did radio and television commecial jingles in this time span.

1993: Lead Me Not

White sang backing vocals for Rodney Crowell, who produced her debut album.

She joined a publishing house owned by Ronnie Milsap in the early 1990s, taking acting lessons and performing at local dinner theaters. White ultimately decided not to pursue acting at the time, as she preferred singing and songwriting. However, she attributed the acting lessons as helping her become more confident on stage. White also auditioned for the band Highway 101 after their lead singer Paulette Carlson quit, but was unsuccessful. After attending an American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) showcase in 1991, she was discovered by a cousin of country singer Rodney Crowell, who at the time was looking for a backing vocalist in his touring band. Crowell liked her vocals and thus encouraged her to sign with RCA Records Nashville. In 1993, the label released her debut album Lead Me Not. The album, which White co-produced with Crowell and guitarist Steuart Smith, included three singles: "What a Woman Wants", the title track, and "Lay Around and Love on You". All three of these singles entered the Billboard Hot Country Songs, although none reached Top 40. The title track also received a music video which was aired on CMT and TNN. Research conducted by music journalist Joseph Fenity in 2021 declared the "Lead Me Not" video to be a lost television broadcast, as RCA Records Nashville executives were unable to find any record of the video in their archives. Smith also played guitar on the album, while Crowell, Claudia Church, Russ Taff, and Radney Foster provided background vocals. Brian Mansfield of AllMusic noted the musical variety on the album, but thought that this variety kept the album's singles from being successful on the charts. Alanna Nash shared a similar opinion in Entertainment Weekly, describing the album as "both dazzling in its diversity and confusing in its direction."

1994–1995: Wishes

White's second album, 1994's Wishes, was also her most commercially successful. It accounted for three consecutive top-ten entries on the Billboard country charts between then and 1995: "That's My Baby", "Now I Know", and "That's How You Know (When You're in Love)". Of these, "Now I Know" was the highest-ranking with a peak of number five in 1995. Richard McVey of Cash Box wrote that "Now I Know" was "rich lyrically and vocally". White co-wrote both "That's My Baby" and "That's How You Know", plus three other songs on the album, with songwriter Chuck Cannon; the two of them married just before the album's release. White said that the collaborations with Cannon came during springtime writing sessions with Cannon on his front porch at his home in Nashville, Tennessee. Other contributing songwriters included Verlon Thompson, Suzi Ragsdale, Tom Shapiro, and Chris Waters. Garth Fundis produced the album, and sang backing vocals on it alongside Thompson, Cannon, and Hal Ketchum. The album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments of 500,000 copies. Reviewing the album for AllMusic, Johnny Loftus praised White's "torchy vocal" along with the "grit" of the musicianship. On May 15, 1995, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified Wishes gold for shipments of 500,000 copies in the United States. Also stemming from the album's initial success was a nomination by the Academy of Country Music awards for Best New Female artist in 1994. White accompanied this with an acoustic set at Fan Fair (now CMA Music Festival) in 1994, followed by her first tour in 1995.

1996–1997: Don't Fence Me In

Don't Fence Me In was White's third RCA release, with the title track a cover of the Cole Porter-written song made famous by The Andrews Sisters. For this cover song, Shelby Lynne and Trisha Yearwood provided backing vocals. White said that she perceived Don't Fence Me In as a concept album with a central theme of "breaking down barriers" and "rising above tough circumstances", according to New Country magazine. The album's lead-off single was "Ready, Willing and Able", previously recorded by Daron Norwood in 1995 as the title track to his second album. White's rendition of the song was a Top 20 hit in 1996, although the only other single from the album did not reach Top 40. The music video for "Wild at Heart" was withdrawn from television networks TNN and CMT after only a month. This was due to mental health organizations began protesting its imagery, which featured a patient at a psychiatric hospital encouraging the other patients to start dancing. Richard McVey of Country Standard Time reviewed the album favorably, stating that "With grittier-style vocals, a lot of attitude and definite musical growth, White offers up an album that has finally seen her come into her own". He found influences of contemporary R&B and blues in White's delivery and production. Jim Ridley of New Country magazine praised the album's concepts and the cover songs, along with the vocal harmony and slide guitar work of Mike Henderson, but criticized Josh Leo's production as "slick and syrupy".

Also in 1996, both White and Cannon co-wrote and sang backing vocals on "The Lonely", a track from Toby Keith's album Blue Moon. Her final release for RCA was a greatest hits package called The Best of Lari White reprising all her singles to that point including the Tritt duet, as well as two newly-recorded tracks, and the non-single "Itty Bitty Single Solitary Piece 'o My Heart" from her debut album. Also included on the album was her rendition of the hymn "Amazing Grace", which had previously been released as a single from the 1995 Sparrow Records multi-artist compilation Amazing Grace: A Country Salute to Gospel. She also covered another hymn, "There Is Power in the Blood", for the soundtrack of the 1997 Robert Duvall movie The Apostle. After The Best of Lari White, she exited RCA. Despite not having a record contract at the time, White was a co-writer and duet vocalist on Travis Tritt's mid-1997 single "Helping Me Get Over You", from his album The Restless Kind. At the time, she cited "lack of commitment" from RCA executives, as well as the birth of her daughter, as reasons for her departure.

1998–1999: Stepping Stone

White collaborated with Toby Keith on several occasions.

White's third recording contract came in 1998 when she signed to Lyric Street Records, a former division of Disney Music Group. The label's then-president, Randy Goodman, had selected her as the first act for the new label, and her 1998 single "Lari White" was the label's first release. At the time, Goodman thought that making White the first artist signed to Lyric Street would help raise awareness of the new label, due to White's previous chart successes. The song originated with a poem that co-writer David Kent had e-mailed to White prior to her signing. "Stepping Stone" became a Top 20 country hit in 1998; it was also her only entry on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 73. The album, also titled Stepping Stone, came out later in the year. It accounted for two more singles with "Take Me" and "John Wayne Walking Away", which were less successful on the charts Lyric Street Records executives allowed White to choose her own producer, and she chose Dann Huff. Huff also played lead guitar on the album; he was joined by bass guitarist Mike Brignardello, with whom he had previously recorded in the hair metal band Giant. Mary Ann Kennedy and Pam Rose provided backing vocals. The album included a duet with Toby Keith on the Robert John "Mutt" Lange composition "Only God (Could Stop Me Loving You)", and Keith also co-wrote the track "Tired". "Only God" was later recorded by Canadian country band Emerson Drive on their 2002 self-titled album, and "Flies on the Butter (You Can't Go Home Again)" by Wynonna Judd on her 2003 album What the World Needs Now Is Love. Jana Pendragon of AllMusic wrote that "while most of the material on this project is not worthy of her talent, she still makes a good showing all across the board." She considered White's vocals the strongest on "Flies on the Butter" and "On a Night Like This".

Later career

White ended her contract with Lyric Street in 2000 when label executives wanted her to record a more country pop style than her previous albums. The same year, she made her acting debut after her agent submitted a headshot of her to the producers of the movie Cast Away, who were looking to cast a female country music singer in a role. The producers selected White to play Bettina Peterson, a sculptor with whom movie's lead character (played by Tom Hanks) interacts at the beginning and end. After the film, she placed her musical career on hiatus. She returned in 2004 with the self-released album Green Eyed Soul. Unlike her previous albums, this one focused more on rhythm and blues and soul music. Thom Jurek of AllMusic rated the album four out of five stars, stating, "Make no mistake, this is a very smooth, slick record; but its depth cannot be denied and as a pop record, one of the majors could have scored big with it." Also during this time span, she produced Billy Dean's 2004 album Let Them Be Little and Toby Keith's 2005 album White Trash with Money.

White continued acting in Broadway theatre in the 2000s. One of her roles in this timespan was an original cast member of the Broadway musical Ring of Fire, a musical tribute show to Johnny Cash featuring renditions of his songs. In 2007, she debuted a cabaret production called My First Affair. The cabaret show was at the Oak Room cabaret at The Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan, New York City on February 12, 2007. The show's set list included both Broadway standards and songs that White wrote herself. Also in 2007, twelve tracks from this production were released on an album of the same name. The album was released on April 6, 2007 on Skinny White Girl Records.

White and Cannon co-wrote Sarah Buxton's late-2008 single "Space", as well as Danny Gokey's 2010 single "I Will Not Say Goodbye". In 2014, a group of twenty-four authors and songwriters assembled a collection of stories in a book entitled The Shoe Burnin': Stories of Southern Soul. Included alongside the hardback publication is an audio CD including eighteen original works by the songwriters featured in the book. White is a featured storyteller in The Shoe Burnin' as well as the producer of the audio component of the project. In 2017, she released a pair of extended plays titled New Loves and Old Friends. The former consisted of new songs, while the latter included re-recordings of her hit singles. Collaborators on the latter included Buxton, Cannon, Dan Dugmore, and Charlie Worsham. Matt Bjorke of Roughstock wrote that White "gives us reason to believe in classic storytelling and songwriting and makes a case that we should get to hear more of this brilliant kind of music somewhere".

Musical styles

White's music is defined by her singing voice and stylistic variety. Dave Scheiber of the Tampa Bay Times wrote of White that she had a "strong, crystalline voice that smoothly blends country, rock, pop, and blues stylings". Alanna Nash of Entertainment Weekly compared her voice favorably to that of K. T. Oslin, while an uncredited review of Wishes in RPM called her "a belter with a soft edge that doesn't allow for tedium" and compared her favorably to Linda Ronstadt. Bjorke compared her voice to Bonnie Raitt and Diana Krall; he also thought that the New Loves and Old Friends projects showed influences of jazz and soul music. Writing about her debut album, David Bauder of The Associated Press stated that it "cuts a wide swath from country to gospel to rock and roll...clearly on display is the versatility that's marked her career. Some critics, though, have complained about a lack of focus."

Personal life

White married songwriter and song publisher Chuck Cannon on April 23, 1994. Prior to their marriage, Cannon had co-written her single "What a Woman Wants"; he would also write "That's My Baby" and "That's How You Know (When You're in Love)". The couple had three children together: daughters M'Kenzy and Kyra Ciel, and one son named Jaxon.

In September 2017, White was diagnosed with cancer. Exploratory surgery in October 2017 revealed advanced peritoneal cancer. She died in Nashville, Tennessee, on January 23, 2018, at the age of 52.

Discography

Main article: Lari White discography

Albums

• Lead Me Not (1993)
• Wishes (1994)
• Don't Fence Me In (1996)
• The Best of Lari White (1997)
• Stepping Stone (1998)
• Green Eyed Soul (2004)
• My First Affair soundtrack (2007)
• New Loves (EP) (2017)
• Old Friends (EP) (2017)

External links

• Official website