Jesco White: the story of ‘The Dancing Outlaw’
Any nepo baby will tell you that being the child of a celebrity is a double-edged sword.
Of course, understanding folks that we are, our first reaction will almost certainly be to sneer at them. Rightfully so in most cases. They have been afforded ludicrous privilege simply due to the circumstances of their both. Even if they are talented, hard-working, smart and good-natured, they can’t deny the leg-up they’ve been given in life. Honestly, if they are actually all of those things, you often won’t need them to “admit it”; they’ll be the first to say it and offer that leg up to others as a result.
Yet, it is undeniable that having a famous parent gives people one hell of a legacy to live up to. That’s something that the vast majority of us can relate to. There are a few of us who haven’t looked at the achievements of our parents and wondered whether we’ll ever achieve anything like that. Now, imagine that you’re the child of Tom Hanks or Beyoncé and imagine how insane that pressure must be. Even if they’re not a megastar beloved by all on the planet, there are some folks who take the legacy of their famous parents worse than anyone could have imagined.
Case in point, we must look at the story of ‘The Dancing Outlaw’ Jesco White, a truly bizarre tale of what happens when the scion of a symbol of dewey-eyed, rose-tinted Americana is confronted with the harsh truth of life in modern, rural America. Someone who struggled to live up to his father’s memory, despite being haunted by his violent death that the poor guy witnessed firsthand, and still carries the mental and physical scars to this day.
Who is ‘The Dancing Outlaw’?
Really, our story begins with Jesco’s father. Donald Ray White was a dancer. A native of Boone County, West Virginia, he became a local celebrity due to his skill at mountain dancing, a subtle mix of tap and clog dancing native to the Appalachian mountains. Thanks to this local fame, he was able to raise a large family, one that became notorious in their home town for their instability and involvement in several unwholesome activities. Whatever they were responsible for, what happened next was still a mind-bending tragedy that no one should ever go through.
D Ray got into a dispute with his neighbour, Steve Allen Rowe, while out with Jesco and another son of his, Dorsey. The quarrel escalated, then spun clean out of control when Rowe shot D Ray with a shotgun, killing him instantly and wounding his two sons. Jesco, nearly 30 at the time, had spent the vast majority of his youth and young manhood high, and the loss of his father in front of him spurred him on to follow in his father’s footsteps in the most literal fashion. Inheriting D Ray’s dancing shoes and trying to make a career as ‘The Dancing Outlaw’.
The results were mixed. If anything, the most attention the family has had since has been less focused on dancing, and more on their family exploits, with several documentaries showing off their self-destructive, drug-fuelled history of petty crime and financial destitution.
Yet, as these documentaries show, Jesco has never stopped trying to take his dad’s art form and carve out a name for himself with it. That kind of tenacity should be celebrated, even if it comes from a deeply complicated character like ‘The Dancing Outlaw’.