An Intriguing Look at ‘Tony Joe White’

If the record industry threw the “new Elvis Presley” tag around in the late ‘60s the way they did the “new Bob Dylan,” no one would have been a more likely target than Tony Joe White.

Like Elvis, White, who now lives in Nashville and releases records on his own Swamp Fox label, was a magnetic personality with a deep, sensual vocal style.

White wasn’t a Presley imitator, but a writer-singer whose grasp of Southern country and blues music was similar to Presley’s. His songs weren’t suited for the Elvis of the “Hound Dog” years, but for the Elvis who reached back to his roots in such late-’60s recordings as “Suspicious Minds” to find meaningful adult material.

Presley had such success with White’s songs--”Polk Salad Annie,” a centerpiece of his Las Vegas shows, and “I’ve Got a Thing About You Baby,” a Top 40 hit in 1974--that it’s surprising he didn’t record more of them.

Part of the fun of listening to Warner Archives’ “The Best of Tony Joe White--Featuring Polk Salad Annie” is imagining which other songs in the 20-track retrospective would have worked for Presley.

Among the possibilities: the classic R&B; feel of “If I Ever Saw a Good Thing,” the good humor of “Even Trolls Love Rock and Roll” and the spunk of “They Caught the Devil and Put Him in Jail in Eudora, Arkansas.”

Raised on a cotton farm near Oak Grove, La., White was the youngest of seven children. After playing for years at clubs in the area, he was in his early 20s when he headed to Nashville in 1967 in search of a recording contract. Two years later, he had a Top 10 hit with “Polk Salad Annie,” a song whose emphasis on regional characters and attitudes was typical of his music.

Though White toured with such major acts as Creedence Clearwater Revival, he apparently preferred to stay home and write. If he had concentrated more on live shows, he could have been one of the biggest stars of the ‘70s.

But his legacy now is in his songs. Presley wasn’t alone in turning to those songs. Among other artists who have recorded White’s material: Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Waylon Jennings, Dusty Springfield, Tina Turner and Brook Benton. Benton’s version of “Rainy Night in Georgia” was a Top 10 single in 1970.