Meeting Tony Joe White
I’ve encountered Tony Joe White, either from afar, or up close and personal, a few times in my life. These encounters with him were always fun and educational for me. The first time was when, “Polk Salad Annie” was released in 1969. Being from California, where there really isn’t an accent (unless you count the Jeff Spicoli/surfer dude accent). I’ve always been fascinated by people who speak with accents: Southern accents, North Eastern accents, Mid-Western accents, British accents; all sorts of accents. Those accents intrigue me to no end. Tony Joe’s voice, and his accent, got my attention. “Polk Salad Annie”’s one of those songs that just hooked me. Big time! I had never heard things like some of the lines in that record, “A mean, spiteful, straight razor totin’ woman.” Wow. Now there’s someone I couldn’t even fathom meeting in my wildest imagination. I certainly wasn’t going to meet someone like that in my little suburban Northern California neighborhood.
I listened to that record over and over and over again. After a while it wasn’t even about the lyrics for me anymore. It was just the sound of that man’s voice. In my world, it was singular and the sound of it, to me, was just the coolest thing ever. The same thing happened to me when I heard Elvis’ Sun Records recordings. It was just another world completely removed from my little corner of the Left Coast. I couldn’t get enough of it.
The other thing about Tony Joe that hooked me was his guitar playing and the sound of his guitar. It was that greasy, bluesy, swampy, deceptively simple way of playing that’s actually incredibly hard to do right. You hear that kind of playing all over records made in Memphis, Muscle Shoals and wherever the Excello Records people happened to be recording; which was mainly in Nashville. Some of the originators of that style are Pops Staples, Curtis Mayfield, Catfish Collins, Cornell Dupree and Steve Cropper. Tony Joe had his own take on it and for my money, it’s one of my favorite styles in that genre of music. Tony always had, from his very first record, absolutely killer guitar tone.
I went to a concert in the early/mid ‘70s when I was in high school, Sly and Family Stone was the headliner. I was really stoked about being able to see Sly and his band but it was the opener that really caught my attention: Tony Joe White. Man, he did not disappoint. He played for about 40 minutes and finished up with “…Annie.” I was in heaven. He was so great live! It was a stellar show and he looked like he was having such a good time up there. The man was a natural storyteller and part of his story telling came thru his guitar. I remember his tone was fat, and not too distorted. His sound was like it was on records but there was something about it, in that live setting, that just made it sound huge to me. One of the best guitar sounds I’ve ever heard live was Tony Joe on that night.
Fast forward to either 1991, or ’92 at a guitar show here in Nashville. Back when the shows were at the Fairgrounds. I had a booth at the show. Most of the guitars I brought were Teles and Esquires, along with a few P-90 Gibsons. I had a couple of real clean maple neck ‘50s Strats too. A friend, in the booth next to mine, had about thirty ‘50s and early ‘60s Strats for sale. I remember it was Friday, “Dealer day” in which dealers loaded in their guitars, amps and stuff, for the weekend. There were a few VIPs walking around, I remember chatting with James Burton and Steve Cropper stopped in to chat for awhile. Tony Joe came by my booth later in the day and sat down to play a few guitars.
I told him how the sound of his voice caught my ear when I was a kid in California and how his guitar style and tone was one of my favorites. We talked about music for little bit and guitars for quite a while. He told me he was looking for a really good Strat. He played the ones I had and they didn’t move him so he started going through my buddies collection of Strats. It was interesting to watch him try out guitars. He knew exactly what he was looking for when it came to how the guitar should sound. In retrospect, the one thing he never mentioned was how he liked a guitar to play. On that day it was all about sonics. He’d plug a guitar in, tune it and hit a chord, play a quick little run and that was it. No more than a minute, actually about thirty seconds, to decide if the guitar he was playing was a good one or not. I remember asking him what he was looking for and he said, in that killer voice, “Tone. I’m just looking for tone and a vibration.” At first I was thinking, “Ok, he’s from the ‘60s so is this some sort of hippy platitude stuff? Vibration?” Then he found a guitar he liked, after trying just about all 30 guitars. He really dug in and played for a little while and I was totally loving this impromptu little concert Tony Joe was putting on.
When he stopped playing I asked him about the vibration thing. What was he getting at? Was this some sort of message from on High that says, “This is THE one!” No, that wasn’t it he laughed. Not at all. He told me he was noticing how the neck vibrated in his hands as he hit an open E chord. He showed me the trick with the guitar he liked and one of the, “dead” guitars that was in the reject que. Sure enough, the guitar Tony Joe liked rang like a bell and I could definitely feel the neck vibrate in my hand. I could also feel the guitar vibrate against my body as I played it. Another thing I noticed, maybe for the first time, I could really hear the springs resonate in the back of that Strat’s body. The thing had like a built in reverb. I remember Tony Joe laughing and saying, “Yup, a good one sounds like it’s got a reverb tank in it.”
That was one of the best lessons in how to pick a guitar I ever had. I’ve always been grateful for Tony Joe showing me that trick.
Now we have Tony Joe’s personal Strat at Carter Vintage. Knowing how incredibly discerning that man was about the instruments he played I just had to it pick up, tune it up and hit that E chord. The guitar rings like a bell. Not every vintage guitar is special; in fact, a surprising amount of them are pretty unimpressive. Tony Joe’s Strat went to head of the class for me. That thing sounds… like records.
Gary Bohannon is Senior Authenticator and Acquisitions for Carter Vintage. If you have a vintage instrument you’d like to sell through CVG, reach out to info@cartervintage.com
Gary’s Thought for the day: You can’t buy happiness but you can buy a fuzz pedal and that’s close enough!