Joe Simon - Better Than Ever & Simon Sings

I've been kind of waiting to start Joe Simon with more of his Vee Jay and Sound Stage Seven stuff but neither Cliff nor I have them. Instead we will start the last Sound Stage Seven album from 1969 and the Monument album of the same year. There are 3 other SS7 albums and a Buddha release of the Vee Jay material....anyone?

"Simon was born September 2, 1943 in Simmesport, Louisiana. Similar to many other African-American artists from the era, Simon began singing in his father's Baptist church. He pursued his vocal abilities full-time once the family moved to Richmond (near Oakland, California) in the late 1950s. There Simon joined the Golden West Gospel Singers and became influenced by Sam Cooke and Arthur Prysock. With this, the group decided to turn secular and recorded "Little Island Girl" as the Golden Tones in 1959.

Hush Records label owners Gary and Carla Thompson urged Simon to record on his own, and in 1964 Simon scored considerable success on the Vee-Jay label with "My Adorable One". Simon scored again in 1965 on the Chicago based label with "Let's Do It Over", which landed a #13 spot on the US Billboard R&B chart. However, the Vee-Jay label folded soon after the latter song's release and Simon found himself traveling across the country singing.

Simon caught the eye of Nashville, Tennessee, R&B disc jockey John Richbourg during this time, and Richbourg not only became Simon's manager/record producer but also brought the singer to Monument Records' subsidiary label Sound Stage 7 in 1966. That year Simon released "Teenager's Prayer", which peaked at #11 on Billboard's R&B chart. Within the next two years, Simon released a string of hits: "(You Keep Me) Hanging On", "The Chokin' Kind" (Billboard Hot 100 #13), "Farther On Down The Road", and "Yours Love". "The Chokin' Kind" was written by Harlan Howard, spent 12 weeks in the charts, and had sold one million copies by 16 June 1969. In addition, Simon was given a Grammy Award in 1970 for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance.

Under the encouragement of Richbourg, Simon moved to the Polydor distributed Spring Records label in 1970, which paired Simon with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. The team scored a #3 R&B hit in 1971 with "Drowning In The Sea of Love" and a #1 R&B hit in the summer of 1972 with "Power Of Love". Both songs reached #11 on the Hot 100. "Drowning In The Sea of Love" sold over 1.5 million copies and the R.I.A.A. on 6 January 1972 gave a gold disc. "Power of Love", written by Gamble, Huff and Simon was Simon's third million seller, and the R.I.A.A. awarded gold disc status on 29 August 1972.

Simon continued to release R&B hits with "Pool Of Bad Luck", "Trouble In My Home", "Step By Step", "I Need You, You Need Me", "Music In My Bones", "Carry Me", and 1975's "Get Down, Get Down (Get On The Floor)", which gave Simon his third #1 R&B hit, and also a #8 Hot 100 hit. Simon's success escalated with his writing/producing the theme tune for the film, Cleopatra Jones in 1973.

In the late 1970s/early 1980s, Simon decided to remove his tenor/bass-baritone voice from the secular music world and devote it and his life to Christianity. Simon began evangelist preaching in Flossmoor, Illinois. In 1983, he produced the album Lay My Burden Down for former Davis Sisters second lead Jackie Verdell. Simon released a gospel album titled This Story Must Be Told in the late 1990s.

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.