Tony Joe White

Manhattan, New York City. November 2014. The Late Show with David Letterman. The temperature inside the Ed Sullivan Theater is nearly as cold as it is out on Broadway — a lot colder for sure than in northwest Louisiana, just south of the Arkansas line. That’s where Tony Joe White grew up, the wellspring that has nourished his mysterious, magical songs for more than 50 years. But on this night he sits at center stage during the Letterman taping, dressed in black from boot to broad-brimmed hat. To his right, Dave Grohl leads the rest of Foo Fighters as they lock onto the mean, pulsing groove of “Polk Salad Annie.” A horn section stabs the beat, but it’s White’s deep, near-whispered vocals and snarling, fuzz-toned guitar that take that Big Apple room way down south, where Spanish moss drapes gnarled cypress trees, where corn snakes slither and turtles snap and ghosts float through the steamy air. No wonder Letterman marveled as the song came to its end, “If I was this guy, you could all kiss my ass.” And no surprise that Grohl allowed White to speak for all the artists featured in the Nashville episode of his “Sonic Highways” series. “If you got something in your heart, put it out ‘cause nobody on this whole planet has wrote those words or played that lick before,” White mused to the camera, partially hidden in shadow. “And if it ain’t got something there, maybe you should go back to the cotton fields.” White grew up around cotton, the youngest of seven children raised on their father’s farm. Young Tony Joe was alert to every detail of his surroundings: its aromas, tastes and sounds, the scent and feel of swampland. He knew well the trials of work in the fields and the stories spun late at night, stories peopled by preacher men and conjure women, serenaded by train whistles and illuminated by spells and signs.

Photo Credit: Photo by David Redford