SWAMP-ROCK

Rip It Up, Issue 177, 1 April 1992, Page 6

SWAMP-ROCK

Down in Louisiana, where the alligators grow so mean... Tony Joe White emerged in the late 60s with a gunny sack full of songs that told of granny-eatin' 'gaters, cotton pickers, rednecked sheriffs arid rainy southern nights.

And if at times the songs were so picturesque that they could have been a Hollywood scriptwriter's fantasy of bayou life, there was something about White's earthy, honest delivery that told you these were matters close to his heart. But while White's songs stuck around — Brook Benton's version of 'Rainy Night In Georgia' and Elvis Presley's 'Polk Salad Annie' are , oldies-radio perennials—White seemed to vanish back into the swamps. The first hints in almost a decade that he was still out there somewhere came when four new White tunes appeared on Tina Turner's Foreign Affair album. Then, just a few months ago, he burst back with his own Closer To The Truth. His first album in seven years is a classic brew of swamp funk and southern ballads. He's still singing those stories in his rich growl, blowing bluesy harp and pumping his "whomper-stomper" guitar. And to nail it all down he's recorded in Alabama with the ultimate southern sidemen, the Muscle Shoals rhythm section, who played on all those soul hits by the likes of Wilson Pickett and Percy Sledge. "I caught them guys at a good time," explains White, drawling long-distance from his log-house in Franklin, Tennessee (somewhere in * the countryside between Memphis and Nashville). "Even Muscle Shoals were having to use programmed drums and that kinda stuff just to make a living. In fact Roger Hawkins had has drums in a closet when I came down there and I told him 'Pull them drums out and knock that dust off 'em and let's rock!" Tony Joe wasn't going to stand for an electronic backbeat and that's

clearly part of the reason it's taken him so long to record. "I just got tired of record companies in America, the way they was handling the music, and I decided to puH back and write some good songs and demo 'em and work with other artists in the studios. And I was still playing a lot of blues clubs, touring, doing shows. I just wasn't making records until I got in a position where I could go in and make it the way I wanted to. It took me seven years, but I finally went in and did it the right way."

With that kind of resistance on the home front, does he perhaps feel more appreciated in places like the Pacific and Europe?

"Well, you know my whole thing started in Europe even before 'Polk Salad Annie' came out in the US. I had a song that hit in France called 'Soul Francisco' and they started calling it swamp-rock, swamp-blues and they kinda put the title on my

music. So it was funny that I had to go all the way over there just to get my music named. But I have a lot of good friends in the US. It's just the record companies over here don't really respect the music the way they should." If Tony Joe's new album sounds reminiscent at times of mainstreamers like Mark Knopfler or Chris Rea, chances are it's because his early records were high on their personal playlists when they were starting out. But who did Tony Joe listen to when he was a learner? "Lightning Hopkins, an old blues singer. Of course I listened to Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, people like that, but Lightning Hopkins mainly. My brother brought an album home. You see, we lived over on a cotton farm down in Goodwill, Louisiana and we didn't go out much, just worked and played music. All my family played guitar and sang and we all listened to that, but I listened to it a lot. It just made me want to play guitar and I'm sure a lot of my licks come close to his. I think now, after all this time, I finally play the way I feel inside, but he influenced me a lot."

What inspires your songwriting? "Most everything I write is about something I know about, something that's true. Like the 'Tunica Motel' for instance (the opening track on Truth). That's a real place outside of Memphis, down in Mississippi and it's an old rundown place we go and spend the night sometimes when I go fishing down there. It's right by the river. It should be condemned, it's such a beat up place. But anyway, you go and spend a night and you can be on the river before daylight." An older example he gives is 'Willie and Laura Mae Jones', a hit for him (and covered by Dusty Springfield) in the late 60s, that tells of a couple of neighbouring families, one black and one white, whose friendship is forced apart by racial prejudice when they move from the country to the city. "Willie and Laura Mae — I changed the names, but I used to pick cotton with those people and I'd

hear 'em sing and play their music and I'd go over to their house and hang out. Back in them days blacks and whites all hung out together and did our work and enjoyed each

other. There weren't too much

acknowledgin' that you're black or you're white or this n' that. We were just brought up different back then in the woods. That's real people." During his long recording layoff White released an album of live

songs made in Europe in the early 70s. It's a steaming set, with the other great southern rhythm section (Duck Dunn, Sammy Creason and Mike Utley) providing the boilerhouse backing.

"I was on tour with Creedence Clearwater," White recalls. "We

taped every night. At the end of that tour they gave me all of my tapes and just about five years ago I went in and remixed the tapes and put it out on my own little label.

'We tried to bum Creedence each night on stage. It was like a war between us because here

Creedence were, playing all these swamp tunes, and they was from San Francisco, California. He (John : Fogerty) was a good writer, but it was always amazing to me how they could live in Berkley and talk about full moons and alligators and stuff like that," White laughs. "I think he read it." y:

But, ironically, one of the strongest songs on Truth is The Other Side', a powerful ballad based on events that took place far away from the Louisiana swamps White knows so well.

"I'll tell you what inspired that song was over there in Tiananmen

Square, seeing 'em running over

those kids in tanks. I couldn't believe they was doing that and sooner or later I knew it was going to pop up in one of my songs. But it's a sad song. I don't need too many of those. It's truthful but it's sad. I try to be more optimistic than that. I try to stay on the upside, although I have a lot of times when I'm bluesy and moody. Maybe that's where the music comes from, who knows?"

NICK BOLLINGER