The DRUM MEDIA.
Tony Joe White's lifestyle reflects the laid back swamp-rock flavour of his songs like Polk Salad Annie and Rainy Night In Georgia.
He has a farm in Tennessee, halfway between Nashville and Mephis, where he tears around in his pickup trucks, and a place in New Mexico that joins on to a Native American reservation where he chills out and write songs (White is part-Cherokee).
There is also a place up in the Ozark Mountains where a river runs 20 feet from the back door of the run-down house, and where he keeps horses and cattle.
"It's a perfect place to fish and hang out," says White."We didn't even have a telephone for the first ten years we were here. We were cut off from the world. The only reason we got one was my wife needed to speak to the local grocery store!
" "Back in 1972 I invited Elvis to come up here. My wife and I were flown on his jet to Las Vegas because he was doing one of my songs on stage. He looked great, slim and mean. I talked to him backstage, played some music with him, and I said to him, whenever you tire of this, come fishing with me up in the Ozarks."
A French camera crew doing a documentary on White (France is, per capita, his biggest market) accepted his offer, "They saw these snakes, they got spooked!"
White grew up picking cotton and riding horses on his father's 40-acre farm, fishing and swimming in the nearby Mississipi River. He was a baseball fanatic until 16, when a brother gave him a copy of a Lightnin' Hopkins record. He'd practice his guitar for hours in the bathroom. These days, Sting, Tina Turner, Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Joe Cocker and Jessi Coulter have recorded his songs. He's currently working on two CDs, Heroes and Heroines, where he duets on new songs with some of them. But in the early'70s, when White emerged as a 19-year old from the small town of Goodwill, Louisiana, he had hits in France, England and Australia before America embraced him. Presley's cover of Polk Salad Annie made him big time.
Two of Elvis'sidemen, Nobert Putman and David Briggs, played on White's 1970 version of Polk Salad Annie. Was it they who encouraged Elvis to record it?
"Norbert and David were swampers from Alabama, they moved to Nashville, and all they did was country music. So when they heard my stuff, they were very happy because they could cut loose.
"HE TOLD ME HOW IT DESCRIBED HIS LIFE.
I SAID, MAN'S THAT'S PRETTY HEAVY"
"But it was Elvis'producer Felton Jervis who took it to Elvis. Felton was a good friend
from the early Nashville days. He kicked it on to Elvis because he knew it would work.
Not just 'Polk'but stuff like For Ol'Times Sake, which he did a really great version of,
Thing About You Baby. Elvis told me,'Man, i like I wrote 'Polk Salad' and I said, Yeah,
the way you do it onstage, it's like you did". However, Brooke Benton's Rainy Nights in
Georgia is the best version of a TJW song have to say that's my favourite version.
It the first time that someone else did my so a double whammy. It's a great honour,
an biggest thing ever happened to me. I wa Memphis when they sent me a copy of his
record, I played it 50 times in a row. We TV show together 'Nashville Now' a few months
before he died. I played guitar, sang. It's the first time an audience in a TV studio
gave a standing ovation, People were crying, man."
These days, White is a fixture at Australi blues festivals. His current visit is his eighth "Ifeel real comfortable in Australia, it reminds me of my home in Louisiana. The people to let you know if they like your music, evert night is Saturday night and they rock."
An Australian connection is that White was once managed by Roger Davies, one time manager of Sherbet. "The great thing about Roger, aside from the fact he turned me on to Australian red wine, is that he just let me roll along and write my songs and play my guitar. But he was influential in moving my songs. I'd send him a song and he'd say, Hey, Joe Cocker could do something with that. He did some amazing things for me that way. in the studio too, he was really good, he had a great year. These days my son Jodie looks after my affairs but we keep in touch with Roger every couple of days." How far are the sessions for Heroes and Heroines coming along? 'It's moving along. Shelby Lynne does a great song called 'I Can't Go Back Home', I got her to sing low, and it's real chilling. I want to sing with Tina Turner on 'Rainy Night in Georgia' with a groove. But she's in the middle of a movie right now. So I might do it with Randy Crawford."
Last time arround he got chatting to Ray Charles backstage at a Melbourne-festival. "it was the first time we spoke at length. I walked in, he started singing Three Four Time and we talked about that song for a long time. He told me how it described his life. I said, Man's that's pretty heavy."
[Tony Joe White plays the Basement Feb 5 and 6]
Feb 3 2004
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