Jack White’s Greatest Collaborations
Jack White is one of the busiest men in music. In addition to releasing music on his own and with an assortment of bands, White is a record producer, a label owner and an occasional actor and director. He doesn’t do it all on his own, though. White has built his career on collaboration, either with long-term partners – like his bandmates in the White Stripes, the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather – or in one-off projects with a diverse range of stars. Click through for a primer on White’s most memorable collaborations.
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Meg White
Jack White broke into the music business as one half of the garage rock duo the White Stripes, and so his collaboration with drummer Meg White will probably always be the most fondly remembered work of his career. Though Meg is sometimes criticized for her primitive percussive style, her chemistry with White is undeniable, resulting in some of the most electrifying and immediate rock music of the past decade. Meg was also a great foil as a vocalist, as her sweet, introverted voice contrasted nicely with his wild, excitable style.
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Alison Mosshart
Though the Dead Weather is technically a supergroup in which White plays with Dean Fertita of Queens of the Stone Age and Jack Lawrence of the Greenhornes, the band mainly serves to highlight his chemistry with Kills singer Alison Mosshart. The band's live performances are known as much for their raw rock power as they are for the incredible sexual tension between Mosshart and White onstage. They both deny having ever hooked up, but that's hard to imagine after having seen this clip of "Will There Be Enough Water?" filmed live at the Roxy in Los Angeles in 2009.
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Brendan Benson
Jack White formed the quartet the Raconteurs mainly to collaborate with fellow Michigan rocker Brendan Benson, who had previously recorded mainly as a solo artist. Their partnership has yielded two albums of garage rock gems, including the hit "Steady, As She Goes" from their 2006 debut.
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Alicia Keys
White teamed up with R&B star Alicia Keys to record "Another Way to Die," the theme to the 2008 James Bond film Quantum of Solace. The tune, which marries the cinematic grandeur familiar to the 007 franchise to White's sludgy blues riffing, is notable as the first duet to be used as a Bond theme.
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Loretta Lynn
Jack White almost single-handedly revived the career of country icon Loretta Lynn by producing the singer's 2004 album Van Lear Rose. The album's single, the rousing Lynn original "Portland, Oregon," is a duet with White that highlights her distinctive voice and his raw yet precisely calibrated guitar tone.
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Electric Six
Detroit rockers Electric Six broke big with "Danger! High Voltage," a surreal disco-metal hybrid featuring backing vocals from a hysterical Jack White. White was never officially credited on the track, which led the band to joke in interviews that the part was actually sung by an auto mechanic named John S. O'Leary.
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Michel Gondry
The White Stripes burst into the mainstream with "Fell in Love with a Girl," a visually striking video featuring Lego animation by French auteur Michel Gondry. The band kept working with him throughout their career, resulting in other clever, memorable clips for "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground," "The Hardest Button to Button" and "The Denial Twist."
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Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi
Jack White rarely works with outside producers, but he made an exception to work on Rome, a project masterminded by super-producer Danger Mouse and Italian composer Daniele Luppi. The album, inspired by classic spaghetti western soundtracks, features three cuts with White on vocals, including the single "Two Against One."
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Insane Clown Posse
White's team-up with horrorcore rappers Insane Clown Posse may be one of the strangest and most unlikely collaborations in the history of rock music. This wasn't lost on White, who embraced the ridiculousness of the situation in announcing their one-off single on Third Man Records in this silly clip from the label's official YouTube channel.
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Wanda Jackson
White helped revive the career of rockabilly icon Wanda Jackson by producing her 2011 comeback album, The Party Ain't Over. The record was a hit, and he joined her onstage for this rollicking performance of the opening cut "Shakin' All Over" on the Late Show with David Letterman.
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Conan O’Brien
Conan O'Brien has been one of Jack White's greatest champions from early on in the rocker's career with the White Stripes. The duo was booked on Late Night with Conan O'Brien several times, including a special residency in 2003 and an appearance on O'Brien's final episode of the series in 2009. This led to O'Brien teaming up with the Stripes for their "Denial Twist" video, recording a live album for Third Man Records and more live collaborations, such as this performance of Eddie Cochran's "Twenty Flight Rock" from the debut episode of his TBS show, Conan.
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The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones called on Jack White to appear onstage with them in Martin Scorsese's concert movie Shine a Light, which was filmed at Manhattan's Beacon Theater in 2006. White, clearly a disciple of the Stones' brand of rocked-up blues, joined Mick Jagger for a duet on the Exile on Main Street classic "Loving Cup."
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Karen Elson
Karen Elson, White's wife from 2005 to 2011, was best known as a model until he produced The Ghost Who Walks, her debut album as a singer-songwriter, and released it on Third Man Records in 2010. White also directed the video for the title track, in which he also appears as a musician.
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Jimmy Page and the Edge
White appeared with Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and U2's the Edge in It Might Get Loud, a 2009 documentary by Davis Guggenheim. The film is mainly just footage of the three guitar gods hanging out, chatting about technique and occasionally jamming on each other's tunes. In this clip, Page teaches White and the Edge how to play the riff from "Kashmir."
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‘American Pickers’
In this segment from an episode of the History Channel's American Pickers, the show's hosts strike a deal with White to trade an enormous taxidermied elephant head for a vintage jukebox and an antique photo booth used in his band the Dead Weather's video for the song "Hang You from the Heavens." As might be expected, White drives a hard bargain but respects the antique dealers' game. "I love anybody who can go through somebody's garage and find something interesting," he says.
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The Flaming Lips
The Flaming Lips and the White Stripes struck up a friendship in the early 2000s, which resulted in the Lips recording a track called "Thank You Jack White (for the Fiber-Optic Jesus That You Gave Me)" for their Fight Test EP in 2003, and closing out 2004 with this wonderful performance of "We're Going to Be Friends" and "Seven Nation Army" at a New Year's Eve concert in Chicago.
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Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert dedicated an entire week of episodes of the Colbert Report to documenting his visit to Third Man Records' HQ in Nashville to record a single with White's proteges the Black Belles. A lot of funny bits came out of that visit, but this clip of White and Colbert attempting to "out-Catholic" each other with obscure facts about saints, icons and papal protocol is particularly memorable.
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Jim Jarmusch
Jack and Meg White appeared in one of several vignettes in Jim Jarmusch's 2003 film Coffee and Cigarettes. In this clip, Jack enthusiastically talks about his fascination with the inventor Nikola Tesla and demonstrates how to use a Tesla coil.
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Ashley Monroe and Ricky Scaggs
The Raconteurs put a country spin on their single "Old Enough" with bluegrass musicians Ashley Monroe and Ricky Scaggs back in 2008. White produced the alternate version, in which he and Scaggs trade off verses with Monroe and Brendan Benson.