Tony Joe White - The Soul Of The Swamp Fox

I freely admit to being a TOTALLY biased, raving Tony Joe fan; I will preach the gospel of his importance as a songwriter, a guitar player, a singer, and an artist who is a  genre unto himself, until the cows come home. If there is any question of his inclusion here in the context of this blog, let me point out the words DEEP SOUTHERN SOUL and then you tell me what else you would call him. When they was handing out the soul, Tony Joe got himself a double portion. You could just advance to track 11 (I Protest) thru 15 (Hung Up On You) and my case is made - the wonder to me is that more people haven't covered  a wider range of his remarkable songs.  Sure there  are a lot of covers of a handful of his songs like 'Rainy Night in Georgia' , 'Willie and Laura Mae Jones', 'Steamy Windows' or 'Poke Salad Annie' but there is just so much more there! I am particularly surprised that soul singers haven't mined more of these nuggets.

The Complete Monument Recordings, which Cliff was so kind  as to loan me, is a wonderful thing for a nut job like myself, but it is perhaps too much for a more 'sane' introduction. I have pared the 4 disc collection to 45 reasons why Tony Joe is important, roughly half, I think these selections highlight his genius, but I did not limit myself to original songs, some of the covers were too good to pass up.

White is this wonderful gumbo of John Lee Hooker, Howling Wolf, Jamie Robbie Robertson, Dan Penn and Dylan; a story teller of unique gifts and a mean ass guitar player to boot. To my mind an unrecognized National Treasure! In the 100 page book in the Monument set, there is an on-stage picture of Tony fronting a band with Dan Penn,  Spooner Oldham, Donny Fritz, and Chips Moman...I think I'm sorry I missed THAT gig!

  Tony Joe White (born July 23, 1943, Oak Grove, Louisiana, United States) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, best known for his 1969 hit "Polk Salad Annie"; "Rainy Night in Georgia", which he wrote but was first made popular by Brook Benton in 1970; and "Steamy Windows", a hit for Tina Turner in 1989. "Polk Salad Annie" was also recorded by Elvis Presley and Tom Jones.

Tony Joe White was born one of seven children and raised on a cotton farm near the small town of Oak Grove, Louisiana. When Tony Joe was 16, Charles, the oldest of the White children, brought home a Lightnin' Hopkins album and started teaching blues guitar to his younger brother.

As a child, he listened to not only local bluesmen and country singers but also to the distinctive cajun music of Louisiana, a hybrid of traditional musical styles introduced by French-Canadian settlers at the turn of the nineteenth century.

White began performing at school dances, and after graduating, started playing in nightclubs in Louisiana and Texas.

He formed his first band, Tony White & His Combo, while still in his teens. The three youngsters (White, 20, bassist Robert McGuffie, 19 and Jim Griffith, 22) played a nightclub in Kingsville, Texas for an uninterrupted engagement of eight months (six nights a week) in 1964. (now THAT's how you woodshed  a band!)

That band was followed by Tony Joe and the Mojos and Tony's Twilights, and for the next seven years White worked the small clubs of the South before deciding to embark on a solo career singing his own compositions.

In 1967, White signed with Monument Records, which operated from a recording studio in the Nashville suburb of Hendersonville, Tennessee, and produced a variety of sounds, including rock and roll, country and Western, and rhythm and blues. Billy Swan was his producer.

Over the next three years, White released four singles with no commercial success stateside, although "Soul Francisco" was a hit in France. "Polk Salad Annie" had been released for nine months and written off as a failure by his record label when it finally entered the U.S. charts in July 1969. It climbed into the Top Ten by early August, eventually reaching No. 8, becoming White's biggest hit.

White's first album, 1969's Black and White, was recorded with Muscle Shoals/Nashville musicians David Briggs, Norbert Putnam, and Jerry Carrigan, and featured "Willie and Laura Mae Jones" and "Polk Salad Annie", along with covers of Jimmy Webb's "Wichita Lineman".

Three more singles quickly followed, all minor hits, and White toured with Steppenwolf, Sly & the Family Stone, Creedence Clearwater Revival and other major rock acts of the 1970s, playing in France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and England.

In 1973, White appeared in the film Catch My Soul, a rock-opera adaption of Shakespeare's Othello. It was directed by Patrick McGoohan and produced in the UK by Richard Rosenbloom and Jack Good. The cast included Richie Havens, Season Hubley, Susan Tyrrell, Bonnie Bramlett, Lance LeGault, Delaney Bramlett, and Family Lotus. White played and sang four and composed seven songs for the musical.

In late September 1973, White was recruited by record producer Huey Meaux to sit in on the legendary Memphis sessions that became Jerry Lee Lewis' landmark 'Southern Roots' album. By all accounts, these sessions were a three-day, around-the-clock party, which not only reunited the original MGs (Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn and Al Jackson, Jr. of Booker T. and the MGs fame) for the first time in three years, but also featured Carl Perkins, Mark Lindsay (of Paul Revere & the Raiders), and Wayne Jackson plus The Memphis Horns.