Tony Joe White

"Swamp Fox" Tony Joe White has died, aged 75. A singer-songwriter with a catalogue that includes Rainy Night In Georgia, Polk Salad Annie, Steamy Windows, Willie and Laura Mae Jones, Soul Francisco and I've Got A Thing About You Baby is worth re-discovering.

He was born, the youngest of seven, to a cotton farmer in Goodwill, a crossroads near the small town of Oak Grove, Louisiana; mother was part-Cherokee. "Our nearest neighbor was a mile away. 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 they called polk, with a taste a bit like spinach. Entertainment was home-made: "Every day somebody would grab a guitar and cut into a song."

At 15, his brother brought home a record by Lightnin' Hopkins, and taught Tony some chords. Tony dropped his high school flirtation with baseball. He stayed with one of his five sisters in Marietta, Georgia, working as a dump-truck driver for the highway department - where the germ of "Rainy

Night" developed. At 19, he headed to Texas and the beach areas around Corpus Christi. "I was really into it. I mean barefoot all the time and brown and fishing out on Padre Island. And playing in the clubs at night, six nights a week. I thought, “Man, this is already it.”.  Polk Salad Annie and Rainy Night In Georgia were completed - more story songs came after Bobbie Gentry released Ode to Billie Joe in 1967.

In the same year, Tony took a week off from gigging for a drive to Nashville, with his portfolio of songs - he spurned Memphis along the way, only because he was meeting his brother in the country capital. And eventually, he found Bob Beckham, of Monument Records - probably the only blues-friendly producer in town at the time.

I've had Tony Joe, an album on Monument produced by Billy Swan, since it came out in 1970. Here's a typical story song from it.