“I’ve had unbelievable, beautiful freedom with the music for the last several years…” reflects Tony Joe White as a grainy dusk settles. Just entering his seventh decade, White spends his days off the road coaxing inspiration from his surroundings. Not one to write songs on command, they seem to find him—usually when he’s out on his property, a quiet couple of riverside acres some forty miles or so outside of Nashville. “All I can hear from where I sit,” he notes, “are coyotes, birds, or wolves.” 

One of the songs from his latest album, Hoodoo, “9 Foot Sack,” tells of White’s upbringing. “That’s my story,” he says, “of when I was growing up in Louisiana on Daddy’s old cotton farm. Five sisters and my older brother—seven kids. We never felt like we were poor. We worked hard, but we had plenty to eat, and we cared about each other.” Back then, music wasn’t something you listened to. His family played music for entertainment, for release. The blues was added to his childhood diet of country and gospel thanks to a Lightnin’ Hopkins record his brother bought. From there, White was hooked, learning to play his father’s guitar by ear.

After he finished schooling, following a stint driving a truck in Georgia, he formed a series of bands and took to the road. Over countless gigs and a vast repertoire of cover tunes, his laidback, country blues-inflected vocals learned to thrive against the roil of an R&B backbeat. His signature sound was completed when he began to introduce original songs drawn from his experiences and upbringing. A trip to Nashville in 1966 was marked by one lucky break after another, and his fruitful recording career began at the fabled country-soul crucible of Monument Records. Gems like “Polk Salad Annie” and “Rainy Night in Georgia” were just the beginning, as he proceeded to write, record, and perform regularly through the present day, finding great success both at home and abroad. Through the years, his songs have been recorded by everyone from Tina Turner to Elvis Presley to Dusty Springfield.  

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