The late, great “Maestro,” Barry White, accomplished some great feats in the music industry. He sold over 100 million records in his lifetime. However, before he saw any parts of the glitz and glamour of fame, he and his brother were living a street life similar to the one Randy Crawford sang about in ’79.
Barry White admitted that while growing up in a hood of South Central, L.A., California (Watts, to be exact), he and his brother, Darryl (who was only 13 months younger than him and is said to have looked like his twin), were criminals back in the day and they were also involved with gangs. Barry once described himself as an ex-gang banger.
Darryl first went to juvenile jail at 8 years old and Barry went to jail at the age of 16. Yeah, they got started really early.
Their lives had very different outcomes though. Barry White was busted after stealing $30,000 worth of Cadillac tires from a car dealership when he was 16. He served 7 months in prison and vowed to never return. He kept that vow and he never did. Instead, he dove head first into building his music career.
His brother, Darryl, on the other hand, had a different outlook on life and chose to keep living the street life, which costs him in the worst way in the end. He was murdered at the age of 37.
Although there are several conflicting reports, Darryl’s murder was originally recorded in December 1982. According to the L.A. detective who was assigned to Darryl’s case, Detective Steve Morgan, Darryl went to a liquor store for his neighbor, Ernest Little (who was 59 at the time), who’d given him $20 to buy liquor, beer, and cigarettes. Dt. Morgan said Darryl returned with only liquor and didn’t give Little his change and that’s when things blew up – they started arguing and Little allegedly shot him in the torso with a small-caliber handgun. Little was then charged with murder.
It is so senseless for Darryl to have been murdered over less than 20 bucks, which obviously hurt Barry to the core. The “Maestro” legend later expressed, to writer David Ritz, his confusion about why Darryl remained in that lifestyle:
“No one could understand the bond between me and Darryl. I struggled to understand the forces that drove his soul in one direction and mine in another. That struggle continues,” Barry said.
It’s easy to look at how Barry White and his brother, Darryl White, had two vastly different outcomes and ask the question- ‘Why was Darryl still living that life, when his brother was filthy rich?’ There are probably several answers that could apply to that. Maybe Barry tried to give him an opportunity to work for him and take him off the streets, but it just wasn’t what Darryl wanted. Maybe Darryl had too much pride to be employed by his brother, as opposed to having his ‘own thing’ going. Maybe Darryl was trying to become a superstar in his own right and attempting to step outside of his brother’s overpowering shadow, except instead of Darryl having aspirations of being music superstar, he preferred to be a hood superstar.
We could go on and on with the assumptions about why Darryl had access to a better life through his brother’s success, but chose the street life. One thing is definite in this equation though and it reminds me of a wise Old School saying: ‘You can lead a horse to the well, but you can’t make him drink.’
May Barry and Darryl White continue to rest peacefully.
-ILoveOldSchoolMusic, old school news with a new point of view
