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Sonny White was born Ellerton Oswald White on November 11, 1917 in Panama City, Panama. He took the nickname Sonny while a member of Jesse Stone’s band in the middle of the 1930s. Later in the decade, he played with Willie Bryant, Sidney Bechet, Frankie Newton, and Teddy Hill alongside Dizzy Gillespie and Kenny Clarke.

He recorded several sessions with Billie Holiday, with whom he had a yearlong affair in 1939, and their engagement was announced in Melody Maker that May. A member of different line-ups backing Holiday in New York between January 1939 and October 1940, Sonny performed on the classic recording of Strange Fruit.

The 1940s saw him spending time in the bands of Artie Shaw, Benny Carter, with whom he played before and after his World War II military service. He would play again with Carter, Dizzy Gillespie, Big Joe Turner, Lena Horne, Dexter Gordon from 1944 to 1946, and Hot Lips Page in 1947.

In the 1950s he played with Harvey Davis and then with Wilbur De Paris, remaining with the latter until 1964. In the 1960s he freelanced with Eddie Barefield, among others, and was working with Jonah Jones at the time of his death. Pianist Sonny White passed away on April 28, 1971 in New York City.

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