Country Music People.
Douglas McPherson heads South to meet the whompin', stompin', chompin' king of swamp rock.
For those of y'all who ain't never been down south too much... let me tell y'all a lil' 'bout Tony Joe White. He was born in Louisiana where the alligators grow se mean. He sang a song about polk salad, with a voice so deep it made the aligators sound tame.
"My brother kinda had a deep voice," says Tony Joe, with a chuckle rising from his slow drawl like the grinning maw of a 'gator rising from the murky depths. "But I don't know where mine came from. I think I must have dove off in the river an'went too deep one day. Even when I was, like, 15 or 16, it was down low."
It's not your average Nashville voice. But then, Tony Joe Whte has never been your average country singer. Or your average rock star. Or your average soul man, for that matter. As he once famously and accurately observed, "They don't know if I'm black, white, country or rock."
Perhaps because his smouldering delevery and steamy tall tales of life in the swamps have always been so hard to classify, White has never enjoyed more than cult status as an artist - although it's a cult that retains a rabid following all over the world. He enjoyed just one U.S. hit with the swamp classic, Polk Salad Annie, in 1969 and, a year later, a single UK chart entry with the seamy lyrics og Groupy Girl.
There can, however, be few in the world who would not register instant recognition of some of the songs he has written, such as the Tina Turner hit Steamy Windows, and Rainy Night In Georgia, which has become a standard.
Among the diverse artists to have performed his work are Elvis Presley, Dusty Springfield, Joe Cocker, Ray Charles and Tim McGraw.
"The one I remember most was when they sent me a single of Brook Benton an'Rainy Night In Georgia. That was the first time I really realised what it meant for someone to cut your song. 'Cos the way he did it... I really didn't think much of the song until I heard him do it. I was pretty much just into swamp rockin' tunes and I really didn't care too much about ballads. My wife told me to put it on ma album. Then, when I heard Brook do it, I said, 'Oh, man, I gotta learn this song!"
Of writing the classic, White says, "When I left high school I went to Georgia and stayed with my sister and her husband for a while. I got a job workin' for the highway department, drivin a dump truck. An'when it would rain down there, an' pour, they'd knock off and you'd get to stay home. I'd stay home all day and play ma guitar and hang out. Then, when I moved to Texas, I got to thinkin' 'bout them rainy nights. I actually wrote it in Corpus Christi, Texas. That an' Polk Salad Annie, I wrote in the same week.
Tony Joe will have you know, by the way, that the wild polk salad plant was very much a part of his upbringing as one of seven children on a cotton farm near the small town of Oak Grove, Louisiana. Just like in the song, which was made famous by Elvis Presley and Tom Jones, he says, "There were lots of times when there wasn't too much to eat, and I ain't ashamed to admit that we've often whipped up a mess of polk salad. Tastes alright, too... a bit like spinach."
Foto: Ian Tilbury
Waylon said, 'Kiss my ass,
I'm gonna do it.'
Tony Joe's primary musical influence was blues singer Lightning Hopkins. "My brother brought home an album by him. I mean, we'd listen to the radio an'such, but I was never much into anything. But when I heard Lightnin', I really got to listening to it. It was somethin''bout that one ol' guy and his guitar. And a lot of the other kids down there, close to my home, they'd all come by and we'd listen to him.
"I'd heard music all my life. My dad played. I had five sisters an'a brother an'they all played. But I really didn't care nothin' about playin' until I heard Lightnin'. So I was about 16 when I started grabbin'Daddy's guitar out of his closet and tryin' to copy some of Lightnin's licks.
"I started playin' dances an'things like that at school. Jus' me an' another guitar player. I knew then that there was nothin' else but playin'."
Having cut his teeth in the bars of Louisiana and Texas as Tony & The Mojos and Tony & The Twilights, White blew into Nashville in 1968. He wasn't received with open arms. "Most of ém told me I should go back toe Louisiana or Texas an' jus' forget it."
Not that Tony Joe was especially enamoured af Music City, himself. "It was a little bit too country'n'western for me and it still is. I hardly ever go down there. We live pretty far out in a lil'town called Franklin. Me and Michael McDonald, Stevie Winwood... It's kinda like a lot of rockç'rollers wher we live. An' Nashville... I don't know, man. It's kinda like a country'n'western Detroit assembly line.
"But I happened to meet probably the only man in the city that woulda listen to a lil' blues, an' that was Bob Beckham at Combine Music. From there we went to Monument Records an' all of a sudden we was in the studio recordin' in a couple of weeks. That was probably a real lucky happenin', because I can't imagine it happenin' today."
Tony Joe's first album, Black & White, was produced by the then unknown Billy Swan. The A side comprised White's own songs and the B side covers such as Wichita Lineman.
"I was, like, for an unknown guy, they wouldn't let you do a whole album. You had to do some of other people's hits. So they made me half it up."
With a chuckle, White continues, "Luckily, not too many people ever listened to the B side! Little Green Apples an' all that stuff! It was an ordeal ever doin' that. But I said if I can do Polk an' a few of mine, I'll put up with it." Initially released to little interest, Polk Salad Annie took almost a year to become a hit, althought it never was on the country charts, where White wouldn't make an appearance until 1980 when he scraped in at #91 with the parody, Mammas Don't Let Your Cowboys Grow Up To Be Babies.
Black & White was, however, heard by Waylon Jennings who covered the opening track, Willie and Laura Mae Jones, on his Good Hearted Woman album. At the time, the lyric about inter-racial friendship was a controversial choice.
"Waylon was probably the only artist back them days that was listenin' to a lil' blues an' stuff like that. I heard the company didn't want him to do it, but Waylan said, 'Kiss my ass, I'm gonna do it.' It was controversial of him, but a lot of people liked that song."
Since then, Jennings has regularly covered White's work, including the recent Closing In On The Fire.
"We've been good friends now for 15 years or more. He came to my house one time in Memphis, back in '78 or '80. Him an' his wife spent the night an' hung out for a couple days. We were sittin' there talkin' an' he said, 'You play an old Stratocaster, don't you?' I said, 'Yeah.' He said,'Well, I like Telecasters. I don't care much about them Strats.' He said,'Come out here a minute.'
We went out to his car. He opened up the trunk an' pulled out his ol' brown case, an' he said,'Here, I want you to have this 'cos I don't want it.' It was a 1958 Stratocaster. In mint condition, man. This guy had found it under a bed in Phoenix, Arizona and Waylon had bought it from him an' he gave it to me. Well, it's like anybody give you a Strat, you're friends for life."
Nashville... I don't know, man.It's kinda like a country'n'western
Detroit assembly line.
In 1989, Whit's profile was given a huge boost when Tina Turner recorded four of his songs on het hit album, Foreign Affair, including te title track and the international hit, Steamy Windows. White also hooked up with his current manager, Roger Davies, who was responsible for Turner's rise to superstardam in the '80s.
"They had heard a demo I did called Undercover Agent For The Blues. I think Mark Knopfler might have played it to her. Me an' Mark has beeen friends for a while and we'd send each other stuff. Anyway, Roger Davies called me and said, 'I want you to come to L.A., meet Tina, then we're gonna fly to New York an' cut Undercover Agent. We want you to play guitar on teh session.'
"From that session we ended up cuttin' for of ma songs. It was like bein' in a dream. Funnily enough, Foreign Affair was the only one I thought was really for Tina, an' I thought it was gonna get overlooked. But I couldn't say nothin', with them cuttin' three of ma songs.
"Then that night Roger callede ma room an' said, 'Tina's heard one more song on the tape. It's Foreign Affair an' she wants to sing it in Paris.' So we flew to London an' cut the tracks there an' then flew to Paris an' she sang it over there in, like, one take."
Tony Joe White today is as busy writing and singing songs as he's ever been. He's just released The Beginning, an album of completely solo acoustic blues previously available only from his website (www.tonyjoewhite.net) but now issued on Audium Records. And he's got plenty more in the can.
"When I started this acoustic album, I started in the early fall and when I got through there was snow on the ground. I actually ended up with about 20 songs, an' there's gonna be a Part 2. Then I've got about two albums' worth of band stuff that I've been stackin' op for about three years. It's real swampy an' it's real raw. Lot of guitar. Lot of whomper stompers in it."
Nov 2001
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