Tony Joe White

“Polk Salad Annie, the gators got your granny… chomp… chomp… chomp… Everybody said it was a shame, ‘cause her mama was workin’ on a chain gang… A wretched, spiteful, straight razor totin’ woman...”
(From “Polk Salad Annie” by Tony Joe White -- 1968)

Tony Joe White is best be known as a bayou-based songwriter who’s penned hits for other artists, including Elvis Presley, Dusty Springfield, Tina Turner, Tom Jones, Beth Orton, and Christine McVie. Unlike his counterpart John Fogerty, who wrote about the bayou without having been there, Tony Joe grew up in the backwoods town of Oak Grove, Louisiana. His songs, populated by gators, witches, preachers, share croppers, hussies, and flim-flam men, resound with down home authenticity. I’m not talking about music made by cross-eyed banjo pickin’ inbreds sharing the same set of teeth. Oh no, Tony Joe’s music is everything that’s good about the South. Its Saturday afternoon baseball games, pullin’ catfish out of the fishin’ hole, and sumptuous pot luck dinners with the family.

Tony Joe was the seventh child of a family of seven children, the equivalent of being the seventh son of a seventh son (meaning he’s lucky despite being born into abject poverty). A baseball jock in high school, Tony Joe caught the music bug from his brother, Charles, who introduced him to the music of John Lee Hooker, Lightning Hopkins and other delta bluesmen. White formed a series of groups, including “Tony Joe and the Mojo Men,” touring the Deep South while developing his catchy, rhythmic guitar playing. Stomping on his wah-wah pedal and hanging onto his bass notes, White developed what he called his “whomper stomper” effect.

Credit Bobbie Gentry, the raven haired Chickasaw County vixen who penned and performed the classic potboiler “Ode to Billie Joe,” with inspiring White to become a composer. When he heard “Ode to Billie Joe,” the southern soap opera struck a chord with White, who said to himself, “I know guys like Billie Joe. I can write a song like that.”

One of White’s early compositions, “Soul Francisco,” became immensely popular in the unlikely locale of Paris, France where Tony Joe became a cult hero and was dubbed “The Swamp Fox,” due to his swarthy looks. “Soul Francisco” also caught on in Monte Carlo, Germany, Japan, and Belgium, turning White into an international star before he became a celebrity at home.

His first single, released in December 1966, was “Ten More Miles to Louisiana” b/w “Georgia Pines.” The 45 was produced by Ray Stevens, who was about to become a country/pop Top 40 star in his own right with a string of off beat comedy tunes (“Guitarzan,” “The Streak”) and airwave dominating message songs (“Everything Is Beautiful,” “Mr. Businessman”). White’s follow up, “Watching the Trains Go By” b/w “Old Man Willis,” wasn’t released for two years, and although it went nowhere, the hobo travelogue “Watching the Trains Go By” showed that White’s talents as a storyteller were improving.

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Posted August 23, 2008 Permalink

Very Best of Little Richard

Very Best Of Little Richard 3 out of 5 stars Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson

A whomp-bop-a-loo-bop-a-whomp-bam-boom!

Specialty Records, the independant R & B record company that signed Richard Penniman (who we all know as “Little Richard”), has released a “The Very Best of ” that lives up to its title. Unlike past compilations, the 25-track retrospective collects all of the pompadoured powerhouse’s essential hits, and they’re remixed with such clarity it sounds as if Little Richard is at your Thanksgiving dinner table yelling “WHOOO!” because he appreciates your mashed potatoes, gravy, and cranberry sauce.

As you listen, you’ll come to realize how much talent-rich tenor sax player Lee Allen and dexterous drummer Earl Palmer contributed to Little Richard’s ribald sound. If Little Richard was the driving force, then Palmer was the piston that drove Richard’s V-8, and Allen was the oil that pumped through the engine block, providing the juice that made Penniman’s music flow.

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Posted August 20, 2008 Permalink

Chicago XXXII: Stone of Sisyphus

Chicago XXXII: Stone of Sisyphus 1 out of 5 stars Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson

“Stone of Sisyphus” (Chicago XXXII) is supposedly the great “lost” Chicago album. It should have stayed that way. Rumor has it the suits at Warner Brothers (then the band’s label) were so offended by what they heard they took the tapes and had them hermetically sealed. Rhino Records has bravely broken the 15-year Sisyphus silence, but the suits were right; this rock don’t roll. It’ll leave you feeling stone cold.

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king punished by Zeus for his trickery -- he stole his brother’s throne, seduced his niece, and betrayed Zeus, the King of the Gods. You can’t fool father nature, so Zeus punished Sisyphus by cursing him to spend eternity rolling a bolder up a hill. Each time Sisyphus pushed the boulder to the top of the hill, it rolled back down again. At least Chicago got the title right. As it says in the liner notes, “Stone of Sisyphus” was supposed to be Chicago’s triumphant return to the top, a risky stab at playing the type of challenging rock fusion they had once made that had dominated the radio. Instead, it rolled back down and knocked the group flat.

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Posted July 20, 2008 Permalink

John Mellencamp - Life Death Love and Freedom

John Mellencamp Life Death Love and Freedom 3.5 out of 5 stars Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson

Where do farmers send their children during the summer? John Mellencamp. (Ouch). This summer you might want to send yourself to your nearest music connection and pick up John Mellencamp’s “Life Death, Love and Freedom,” a surprisingly taut mixture of folk, blues and roots rock. This ain’t your daddy’s John Cougar. John boy’s lyrics don’t harp on the boy-girl misgivings that populated his banal material in years past. Nearly every song is an insightful short story of the perils of adulthood; about roads not taken, growing old, facing loneliness or the country’s economic and social decay.

I have to admit Mellencamp is one of those guys I’ve been hearing for years but seldom actually listen to. I had a long fallow period of disinterest in his work that kept me from being an authority on his songs. I wasn’t much of a fan of his early adolescent mid-western incarnation as John Cougar. Whenever he sang “Ew, yeah, life goes on” in “Jack and Diane,” a “little ditty about two kids living in the heartland,” it made me wish a twister would come along and tear through the Bible belt like a corn dog in an old coot with diverticulitis. “I Need A Lover?” Drove me crazy... “Hurts So Good?”… No it didn’t, and “Rain On the Scarecrow”’s anvil-pounding cadence made me wish somebody had stuck Johnny boy in a field for the crows to pick at. Then there was Cougar’s conversion to adulthood (changing his name to John Cougar Mellencamp was the giveaway), and his dubious conversion to a Live-Aid touting folk rocker. But “The Authority Song” had bird-flipping attitude, and “Play Guitar” had spunk; and despite its country pea-picking influence, “Paper In Fire” lit up the airwaves. Johnny boy lurked in the country idiom a little too long for me, hanging his rep on too many fiddle based duds. When he tried to rock, the result was low wattage high school confidential material like “Cherry Bomb.”

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Posted July 20, 2008 Permalink