Here are 4 things to help you understand Jack White

Nothing is ever black and white when it comes to Jack White.

Rock ’n’ roll’s reigning throwback king is fond of perpetuating his own self-created mythos, spinning half-truths about himself and emphasizing the “story” in his backstory.

Rolling Stone magazine once described White as the rock ’n’ roll Willy Wonka, and that’s an apt characterization: He once even claimed that his record label, Third Man Records, was housed in an old candy factory.

It’s not.

White will soon hit town for a rare small-hall show in between headlining arenas and festivals. So, here are four (provable) things you need to know to begin to understand him:

■ His favorite song says a lot about him.

It’s music at its most elemental: a voice and a pair of clapping hands, keeping the beat.

The song is “Grinnin’ in Your Face” from blues forebear Son House, a former pastor who left the pulpit but still preached, only in song.

Listening to the man sing is like entering a haunted house, such is the way his voice gets under your skin, chills you to the core.

That something so simply constructed as “Grinnin’ In Your Face” could convey so much depth of emotion has clearly impacted White, who counts it as his all-time favorite song.

White’s long been about doing more with less, embracing minimalism and a precociousness that borders on the childlike, at times.

Kids think they can do just about anything they can imagine.

So does White.

■ He’s a preservationist.

Jack White likes to preserve things: dead animals, the careers of pioneering female musicians, rock ’n’ roll.

Besides a love of taxidermy — he once appeared on an episode of “American Pickers” to cop a $12,000 stuffed elephant head — he’s fond of sustaining another kind of natural beauty: the voices of seminal singers.

In 2004, White produced and played on Loretta Lynn’s career resuscitating “Van Lear Rose” and five years later did the same with rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson on “This Party Ain’t Over,” Jackson’s first record to ever chart on the Billboard Top 200 album chart.

What’s more, Third Man Records has become a wellspring of reissues from the formative catalogs of Sun Records, Paramount Records and Document Records.

The music of those labels served as the foundation for the house that Jack built.

■ He’s not big on technology.

White’s an analog man in a digital age, the kind of guy for whom recording software like Pro Tools is as anathema as pastel-colored clothing and smiling at baseball games.

“Technology is a big destroyer of emotion and truth,” White opined in 2008 guitar hero documentary “It Might Get Loud.” “That’s the disease you have to fight in any creative field: ease of use.”

White’s point is that perfect-sounding recordings aren’t wholly true to the imperfect person who made them. He aims to make records that live and breathe, crackle and hiss, and as such, is a vocal proponent of vinyl records.

“I love analog because of what it makes you do. Digital recording gives you all this freedom, all these options to change the sounds that you are putting down, and those are for the most part not good choices to have for an artist,” White said in an interview with guitarist Paul Tingen published on Tingen’s website. “Mechanics are always going to provide inherent little flaws and tiny little specks and hisses that will add to the idea of something beautiful, something romantic. Perfection, making things perfectly in time and perfectly free of extraneous noise, is not something to aspire to! Why would anyone to aspire to such a thing?”

White’s analog advocacy is working: His latest record, “Lazaretto,” has sold more copies on vinyl than any other album released in the past 25 years.

■ He doesn’t really dig convenience, either.

As the youngest of 10 kids, White had to fight for food, attention and his place in the family pecking order when he was growing up.

All these years later, he still takes steps to maintain that scrappy spirit.

When he performs live, White frequently places his instruments far apart from each other so that he will have to hustle from one to the next during a song.

It’s a small way on insulating himself from complacency, from getting too comfortable.

Sometimes White’s fighting side gets him into trouble, such as when he caved in the face of the Von Bondies frontman Jason Stollsteimer in 2003 or recently spat venom at The Black Keys, who he’s dismissed as opportunistic doppelgangers.

Clearly, the guy hasn’t lost any of his edge.

“I’m always worried about being satisfied,” White explained during “It Might Get Loud.” “When you become satisfied, it’s sort of like you just die.”

Some rockers can’t get no satisfaction.

Others never seek it in the first place.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow on Twitter @JasonBracelin.