Re: WHO WAS WHITEY MCPHERSON 1937-8

Still desperately seeking Whitey. Recently found the following, new information in WOODY GUTHRIE: A LIFE by Joe Klein pp.105-6

"By January 25, 1938, Woody had assembleda strange assortment of performers in Tijuana [a representative of the Consolidated Drug Company named Hal Horton called and asked Woody if he would like to sing on station XELO for seventy-five dollars per week. More important than the money to Woody, though, was that Horton wanted him to assemble a troupe of hillbilly performers to broadcast for three hours each night. It meant that Woody could hire the whole family, and still have room for more] including Lefty Lou, Jack GUTHRIE, Jack's parents, Jeff and Allene, Matt JENNINGS, Possum Trot Bruce and the Poe Boys, a skid-row fiddler named Jimmy BUSBY, who always was afraid of the police for some reason, and a twelve-year-old boy wonder named WHITEY MCPHERSON. They performed three times a day on the station --- a show in the morning, Woody and Lefty Lou at noon, and the main three-hour extravaganza at night, which also featured the stations resident cowboy band, Buck EVANS and the Buckaroos."

"During the day the gang --- which also included Mary and the kids, the Crissman family, and assorted stray relative --- lived in a tourist court in Chula Vista, just this side of the border. All the old scare stories about Okies taking over the state must have flashed through the minds of the motelkeepers as they watched the truckloads literally pour in, all of them with fiddles and guitars, Each day brought another member of the family, often carrying all of his or her possessions down from Los Angeles. The CRISSMANS, expecting a long, prosperous run in Tijuana, packed up their Glendale apartment and arrived in a truck the week after the show started, as did WHITEY MCPHERSON's parents. The shocked motel owners kept bumping the rent, but the hillbillies always found the money to pay it."

As a side note: Woody GUTHRIE's step mother was also a MCPHERSON! Bettie Jean MCPHERSON was a "Wagnerian" woman.Trained as a nurse of a rather curious sort "a kind of mystic masseuse. She claimed expertise in chiropractic, phrenology, palmistry, Gypsy Dream Book, tarot cards, coffee grounds, tea leaves, Ouija board, and crystal ball. She had studied the occult with four different spiritualist mediums and two yogis, knew the nineteen points of Rosicrucianism, and could quote more than three hundred healing and gifted scriptures from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Her pride and joy, though was the practice of 'Electro-Magnetic healing,' which she had invented and named because it sounded modern, and you had to keep up with the times."

"Electro Magnetic Healing involved the laying on of hands and a lot of fat talk, which varied according to the patient's malady and gullibility. Aside from easing routine aches and pains, Bettie Jean often claimed to be able ro remove tonsils and gallstones simply by placing hands on the appropriate spot and could produce, on request a jar full of stones she had removed from the rich and famous in California and elsewhere. She was a great believer in the restorative powers of eucalyptus oil, which she slapped on customers with great abandon, and the house reeked of the stuff as did she."

"Upon arriving in Pampa, she placed ads in the local newspapers and soon there was a trickle of customers visiting the little tourist court cottage. Many of her early customers were oil-field workers who'd somehow gotten the idea that she believed alcohol was a sure cure for cancer. The customers would wait in the parlor, then she would attend to them privately in the bedroom wearing a very professional white outfit."

Charley Guthrie and Bettie Jean "would fight, sometimes violently, but he was no match for her. She became so angry once that she ripped the shirt off his back in front of the children. Another time, he ran screaming into the yard with a gun and said he was going to kill himself, but she wrested it away from him. "

"Bettie Jean could be very harsh with the children...she beat the girl [Mary Jo GUTHRIE], kept her a virtual slave in the house and never allowed her out..."

"Nor did many people know that Bettie Jean was practicing voodoo on the side: there were nights when she'd place hundreds of candles in all the rooms and send the children out at 5am to plant beans around the house to ward off evil spirits; once she placed special herbs in Charley's [GUTHRIE] shoes to make him go away"

Wonder if she was related to Whitey? Anyone out there related to her?

The legend continues! Any help greatly appreciated.