White, Tony Joe

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Tony Joe White

Singer, songwriter, guitarist

"A wah-wah guitar, a Louisiana drawl, and a lot of local color go into Tony Joe White's songs," wrote Jon Pareles of the New York Times. Tony Joe White originated the genre called swamp rock with his 1969 hit "Polk Salad Annie" and other bluesy slices of the Deep South region of the United States. Internationally successful with his own recordings and stark live performances, White is nevertheless perhaps best known for a song that he composed but that has been more famous as interpreted by others—the profoundly sad ballad "Rainy Night in Georgia."

One of seven children, Tony Joe White was born on July 23, 1943, in Goodwill, Louisiana, a crossroads near the small town of Oak Grove. His father was a cotton farmer, and his mother was partly of Native American Cherokee background. "Our nearest neighbor was a mile away," he recalled to Chris Campion of London's Daily Telegraph. "The rest was cotton farms and rivers and swamp." The family was poor, and sometimes they made a meal out of a wild, turnip-green-like vegetable called polk (or poke) that grew in the area. Music was a do-it-yourself affair. "It's all anybody had to do for entertainment," White told Campion. "Every day somebody would grab a guitar and cut into a song."

Hooked on Lightnin'

White's whole family was musical, and for a while he tried to buck the trend by focusing on baseball. When he was about 15, however, his brother gave him a recording by blues guitarist Lightnin' Hopkins, and he was hooked. After finishing high school he worked for a short time as a highway department dump truck driver in Marietta, Georgia, where his sister and her husband lived. On rainy days, when the highway crews couldn't work, he practiced his guitar and had the germ of an idea for the song that would become "Rainy Night in Georgia." In the early 1960s he moved to the Texas Gulf Coast around Corpus Christi, put together a band, began playing local clubs, and finished both "Rainy Night in Georgia" and "Polk Salad Annie." By 1964 he was appearing in Kingsville, Texas, in a band called Tony White & His Combo.

"I was doing ‘Polk’ every night" at a Corpus Christi club called the Carousel, he recalled to Campion. "People came to dance. And they had those damn weird dances! One was called the alligator—a guy would lay down on the floors, the girl would lay on his back, and they would just crawl around like gators on the floor." From the start, White's music was bluesy, low, and stark. At the start he accompanied himself by stamping his foot. When the wah-wah guitar pedal became widely available in the mid-1960s, White quickly acquired one and made it a key part of his sound. He spent most of the 1960s in Corpus Christi, starting a family with his wife, LeAnn. The couple raised two children; one son, Jody, later became White's manager.

As fashions changed and gigs diversified, Tony White & His Combo became Tony Joe and the Mojos or Tony's Twilights. The former group may have recorded a few songs for the local J-Beck label, and in 1966 White made a more serious try at breaking into recordings by driving to Nashville and knocking on doors. Staying at a boarding house and mingling with musicians in the city's Lower Broadway district, he heard many discouraging words. But he struck gold when he showed up at the office of Combine Music publisher Bob Beckham, who agreed to listen to his songs and was impressed by his deep blues sound.

European Connection

Beckham quickly steered White to a recording studio and toward the Monument label. Tony Joe White singles began to appear intermittently on Monument, beginning with "Ten More Miles to Louisiana" in 1966 (produced by country novelty singer Ray Stevens). Success was slow to come in the United States, but in 1968 White's "Soul Francisco," a single with pervasive use of the wah-wah pedal, broke through in France when a disc jockey played it on a station in Monte Carlo, Monaco, and received more than 100 phone calls for listeners requesting that it be played again. Monument's Nashville offices soon began receiving telegrams from France asking for copies of the record and requesting interviews with White.

Even as his American career went through ups and downs, White remained popular in Europe and frequently toured there. He also developed a strong fan base in Australia.

European listeners focused on the local Louisiana color of some of White's songs; German fans dubbed him the Swamp Fox, and according to Campion, "the French coined the term ‘swamp rock’ to describe his music, a stew of mythical blues storytelling and R&B rhythms, spiced up with White's soul grunts and hoodoo murmurs." White got the opportunity to record more of his own compositions when Monument prepared to issue his first LP, Black & White, in 1969. That album contained "Polk Salad Annie," which entered the U.S. pop Top Ten and became White's biggest hit. The song told of "a girl that I swear to the world made the alligators look tame."

"Polk Salad Annie" was one of a group of portraits and story songs steeped in the Deep South lore of White's boyhood. Subsequent releases in the same vein, such as the comic "Roosevelt and Ira Lee," had only moderate success in the United States, although some became hits in England and France. Such vivid songs as "They Caught the Devil and Put Him in Jail in Eudora, Arkansas" failed to catch fire commercially, but they continued to fascinate listeners familiar with White's music. His early Monument recordings, never pressed in large quantities, later became collectors' items. White moved to the Warner Bros. label for the album Tony Joe White in 1971.

For the Record …

Born July 23, 1943, in Goodwill, LA; father a cotton farmer; married, LeAnn; two children.

Formed band Tony White & His Combo at age 16; moved to south Texas Gulf Coast, early 1960s; signed to Monument label, released debut single, "Ten More Miles to Louisiana," 1966; recorded "Soul Francisco" single, 1968; released "Polk Salad Annie" single, 1969; Brook Benton recorded composition "Rainy Night in Georgia," 1970; recorded for Warner Bros., early 1970s; recorded for 20th Century Fox, Casablanca, and Columbia labels; composed songs for and performed on Tina Turner album Foreign Affair, 1989; numerous tours of Europe and Australia; European releases, including The Path of a Decent Groove, Lake Placid Blues, and One Hot July, 1990s; released The Heroines (album of duets with female vocalists), 2004; released Uncovered, 2006.

Awards: "Rainy Night in Georgia" named to Rolling Stone magazine list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time (No. 498), 2004.

Addresses: Management office—JD White Management, Inc., 2306 Sterling Rd., Nashville, TN 37215. Website—Tony Joe White Official Website: http://www.tonyjoewhite.com.

Better known than any of White's own recordings was his song "Rainy Night in Georgia," which he had written in Corpus Christi. He thought little of the slow ballad at first, but his wife persuaded him to record a demo that found its way (through Nashville songwriter Donnie Fritts) to Atlantic label producer Jerry Wexler. When South Carolina R&B singer Brook Benton heard the song, he recalled that "Something grabbed me," according to Howard Pousner of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Benton's soulful recording of the song, which a critic quoted by Pousner called "one of the most perfect musical expressions of melancholy," topped Billboard magazine's black singles chart in 1970 and reached the pop Top Five. By late 2006 it had been recorded 222 times, by singers ranging from R&B legend Ray Charles, reggae vocalist Lord Tanamo, country singers Tennessee Ernie Ford and Hank Williams Jr., and Nelson Riddle and his orchestra.

Toured With Top Acts

Touring with such acts as Steppenwolf, Sly and the Family Stone, and Creedence Clearwater Revival in the early 1970s, White maintained a successful career despite his status in the music industry as a maverick who wasn't easily influenced by the latest trends. His European tours took him as far afield as Belgium and Sweden. In the late 1970s and 1980s, however, with electronic pop dance genres on the rise in popularity, White's fortunes suffered. He recorded albums for the disco-oriented 20th Century (Eyes) and Casablanca (Real Thang) labels with little success, and then moved to Columbia's Nashville division for 1983's Dangerous. For several years in the mid-1980s, White was mostly out of the music business.

White's comeback began with a boost from R&B singer Tina Turner, who featured him as producer, songwriter, and instrumentalist on her 1989 album Foreign Affair. He released a series of albums in Europe, including Closer to the Truth (1991) and The Path of a Decent Groove (1993). With 1998's One Hot July, White was back on the roster of a major label (Polygram), but the album's U.S. release was sidetracked when the company's American imprint, Mercury, was reorganized. Even with this setback, White's American career benefited from the growth of the Americana and alternative country music categories. His 2004 Sanctuary label release The Heroines paired him in duets with iconoclastic country female vocalists such as Emmylou Harris, Shelby Lynne, and Lucinda Williams.

Noting that "seminal swamp-rocker White still possesses the same languid drawl, dry humor, and spiky guitar style that drove his 1969 hit ‘Polk Salad Annie,’" Entertainment Weekly reviewer Scott Schinder praised the way the female singers "complement his laid-back authority, while the stripped-down arrangements enhance the steamy Southern soul vibe." White released his album Uncovered in 2006, featuring a remake, one he had long wanted to record, of "Rainy Night in Georgia." His status as a legendary musical survivor was cemented by the release that year of Swamp Music, a boxed set of his collected Monument recordings. In 2007 he performed at the New Orleans Jazz Festival and planned a tour of Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.