March 8, 2013 17:12

Jack White on White Stripes: 'It was always shocking people started caring after three albums'

White also speaks about his new project with Scotland's Document Records to reissue early blues albums

Jack White has said he was always surprised that his former band The White Stripes started getting recognition after three albums.

"It was always shocking that people started caring after three albums," White told The Guardian of the band's third album 'White Blood Cells', which propelled them into the mainstream. "What, now people are getting it?! We'd assumed it was a style of music that nobody would be into and had resigned ourselves to always playing to 50 people. It was good for us, because we'd made up our minds to never care about that, and that's when success happened. It was sorta weird like that, but I think if we'd have watered it down it wouldn't have worked."

White was speaking about his new project with his Third Man Records label, which will see him work with small Scottish label Document Records to reissue early blues material. White's label has partnered up with Document Records to reissue the complete works of Charley Patton, Blind Willie McTell and the Mississippi Sheiks on remastered vinyl.

Speaking about the Mississippi blues artists that inspired him, he revealed: "As a songwriter, even if you're singing about other people or making up characters, it's still your job to be against the world and that all began in the 1920s and 1930s with these blues singers. It was the first time in history that a single person had been recorded to tell whatever story they had to the world. Before that you had to be in a German polka band with a tuba, or jazz orchestra…But suddenly anybody – they didn't even have to be good singers – could have their own voice."

Jack White was recently named as an ambassador for this year's Record Store Day, which will take place on April 20, 2013.

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