The Music Magazine
[COMEBACKS] Thanks to musical rejuvenation, album reissues and club respect, the Soutbern blues of Tony Joe White is hot again. Alexander Stimmel trached the great man down.
NOW, WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN?" HE ASKS THE producer, "'cos I can't sing nothin' that don't mean nothin' to me. " Less an admonition than an admission, Tony Joe White is pacing around a Manhattan recording studio, only hours before his first gig in the city in 15 years. He has skittishly agreed to lay down some vocal and guitar tracks for bluesman Don Nix's forthcoming album, but it's clear that he'd much rather be back at his hotel chilling out before the show. Cramming things into a tight space of time isn't exactly White's MO; in fact, his name and standing as a musician have come about in just the opposite fashion.
"Most everybody in my family played music," White remembers, "but I wasn't into it until my brother brought home a Lightnin' Hopkins album. Man! It turned me around... I was gonna be a baseball player until then." Captivated by this new, raw music, White left his home in Oak Grove, Louisiana, to hit the Texas club circuit, playing night after night of "rock'n'roll and blues. Lightnin', Muddy and Elvis."
It was in Texas that White honed a style of playing that was true to his musical influences but also contained a healthy dose of his countrified, backwoods upbringing. After almost seven years of non-stop bar gigs, White decided to try writing his own material.
He took off for Nashville in 1966, and within weeks the baby-faced bayou boy had landed a deal with Monument Records. Tony Joe White's first single, 1966's Georgia Pines/Ten Miles To Louisiana, was described by one reviewer as "The Beatles meets Herman's Hermits". It failed to make any impact.
Two more singles would come and go before his first album, Black And White, yielded Soul Francisco, a heavy rotation hit across Europe. It was also on the Continent that White's particular blend of styles was given a name: swamp rock.
"Europe started calling my music 'swamp rock' because it's blues with a beat," White recalls, "and that was OK with me, because I'm from the swamp."
Black And White contained all of the elements of swamp rock which would be incorporated into the sounds of artists as diverse as Joe South, Johnny Jenkins, Bonnie Raitt, and Tennessee Ernie Ford: bluesy electric music with a lazy, grooving backbeat; ensconced in a funky, downhome production style, all of which was underpinned by White's honey-smoked baritone. But it wasn't just his sound; White's songwriting had begun to appeal to performers as well.
Black And White's second single, Polk Salad Annie, which peaked at Number 8 on the US charts, became White's biggest ever hit and caught the car of one Elvis Presley, looking for a comeback hit in 1969. Elvis would return to mine White's catalogue throughout the '70s, with notable takes on For Ol' Time's Sake and I Got A Thing About You Baby. "It was shocking! I mean, I used to do Elvis tunes in clubs in Texas. Then I start writin' tunes and all of a sudden he starts doin'mine."
Elvis wasn't the only one; Dusty Springfield cut a version of Willie And Laura Mae Jones for her Dusty In Memphis album, while R&B crooner Brook Benton recorded the definitive version of White's Rainy Night in Georgia, which has since gone on to receive over 100 different cover versions.
Set to come out on Mercury in 1995, a series of buy-outs kept the album in limbo until it was picked up last year by Hip-0. One Hot July is the worthy successor to the swampy period which effectively ended after White's Warners' tenure, as if the intervening years had never even happened.
White's early period is now enjoying a revival in Britain where Tony Joe White... Continued has been reissued (albeit without his involvement), and his murky grooves are providing a myriad breakbeats for the club scene. Is it strange that this rural American music proves so dancefloor friendly? "Not at all," he muses. "I've always known the music I play is dance music. People always move when they see me play. Even at the little club in Texas where I started out, just me, my guitar and footstompin' on a Coca-Cola box, people still came to dance."
Tony Joe White is a proven survivor, like the gators in the marshes near his home. As he sits down to tear through a guitar solo which the produce proclaims "Fantastic!" after the first take he reminisces on what continues to make swamp rock, and his individual brand of it, so appealing: "It bridges that thin line of country, soul, and pop music. It's all blues, but rocking stuff... and the people can get it on to it," White opines with a smile. Amen, we say, to many more year of getting it on.
Alexander Stimmel
April 2001
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