Blues Rock Hits Soul Country – Now live!

Blues Rock Hits Soul Country primes classic rock and soul fans with a paean to the blues, tapping indie DJ/Filmmaker Ric Stewart’s exclusive roots music oral history archives. Featuring interviews and performances from Jerry Wexler, Allen Toussaint, Earl King, Tony Joe White, John Oates, Joe Louis Walker, Peter Case and many more, this treasure chest was 30 years in the making. So grab some popcorn for the next half hour and enjoy. Exclusive interviews and performances tell the tale and introduce “Soul Country” – a podcast also featured @TheBluesCenter 

Remembering the Swamp Fox

Tony Joe White burst onto the national music scene in 1969 with “Polk Salad Annie,” a top 10 hit inspired by Bobby Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe,” drawing on his real life experiences in rural Louisiana. Over the course of an uncompromising six decade career, Tony Joe kept it down home in both minimal bluesy recordings and gutsy live performances on guitar/harmonica and whomper stomper – his name for a Gibson distortion pedal.
His 1967 composition “Rainy Night in Georgia” was included on his second album Continued in 1969 only at his wife’s behest. Six weeks later, Atlantic Records super producer Jerry Wexler shipped White a new rendition by Brook Benton. As White put it in an interview with BC’s Ric Stewart in 2002, “It was like hearing the perfect voice sing those words back to me. I must have played it a 50  times in a row…” It shot to #1 in the R&B chart and #4 on the Pop chart in 1970 and Tony Joe was suddenly on top of the business.

Tony Joe White with author Ric Stewart, 2002

Tony Joe White went on to record 16 studio records in a career packed with one great song after another. On September 28, 2018, White released Bad Mouthin’ (his first all-blues album) on Yep Rock Records, just a one month before his demise at age 75 from a heart attack.  The Oak Grove, LA native’s songs were often picked for covers by musical luminaries such as Tina Turner, Joe Cocker and Elvis Presley. Presley cut three Tony Joe White tracks and the two bonded. White related that Elvis would sometimes find him during sessions at Stax asking for a few guitar pointers – ‘bluesy licks.’ “He’d probably forget them in 2 minutes, but I’d show ’em to him.” As the King was reinventing his sound in the early 1970’s, his stage shows featured “Polk Salad Annie” replete with Kung Fu stage moves.
White’s socially conscious “Willie and Laura Mae Jones,” from 1969 album Black And White, was covered by Dusty Springfield on her definitive work, Dusty In Memphis. His appearance duetting on Johnny Cash’s TV show in 1970 was loose, full of laughs and captured the Man in Black’s appreciation for the Swamp Fox. For a moment, everyone wanted to be Tony Joe!
https://youtu.be/5vkYVWA6yzY
The respect from on high was to continue albeit after decades of a low profile solo career. On his long-awaited final release Chuck Berry covered Tony Joe’s “3/4 Time (Enchiladas).” The rock and roll pioneer described Tony Joe White to Rolling Stone in 2017 as “vastly underrated,” especially such songs as “Polk Salad Annie,” “Rainy Night in Georgia,” and “The Train I’m On.”
With the top talent offering such effusive praise, imitation and admiration, it’s inevitable that more fans will connect with White’s brand of authenticity. Quite possibly the greatest songwriter that not everyone knows, Tony Joe White’s unfiltered take on swamp rock and funky country blues already stands the test of time.

Billy Vera – Blues Center Interview #7

Singer-Actor-Songwriter-Bandleader-Music Historian Billy Vera is the guest for Blues Center Interview #7. With a star on the Hollywood walk of fame right outside the Capitol Records building lauding him mid-career, he has blazed a continual path across the related fields of the entertainment business. His 2017 documentary From Harlem to Hollywood describes his early songwriting success for Ricky Nelson with “Mean Old World” which appeared on the Ozzie and Harriet Show to his #1 hits for Dolly Parton, and then for himself with “At This Moment” in 1987.

His soul duo with Judy Clay, signed to Atlantic and worked with super producer Jerry Wexler to cut wrote “Storybook Children” in 1967. The pairing created a racially integrated act at a time of great tension and rose to fame at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Some of his other exploits, over 300 liner notes and reissue production credits. He won the Grammy for his liner notes to Singular Genius: The Complete ABC Singles of Ray Charles in 2013.

In this interview he discusses Specialty Records and its remarkable run of hits with Little Richard, Lloyd Price, Larry Williams and more. He also discusses the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Robert Plant. A fascinating journey across the decades.