1/2 year old Maurice White with his parents in 1945.


 Maurice White was born in Memphis, Tennessee, 1941 to John White & Edna Parker. He grew up in South Memphis, where he lived with his family in the Foote Homes Projects and was a childhood friend of David Porter and Booker T. Jones. He was raised in his younger life by his grandmother while his mother helped his stepfather through medical school, and began singing in church at the age of six.


"There was a deep sense of spirituality growing up in a Baptist family. A lot of what you hear in my music lyrically was planted in me when I was six or seven years old. My home life was like, poverty, and that whole thing, so all us Black folks turned to the church. I learned to not only love God in a religious sense, but in a FELT sense. You leaned on The Creator when you had problems. His spirit was the cause, energy and power of everything. Learned all that as a kid, from Grandma." - Maurice White... continue reading 

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