Tony Joe White

Tony Joe White (born July 23, 1943, Oak Grove, Louisiana, United States) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, best known for his 1969 hit "Polk Salad Annie"; "Rainy Night in Georgia", which he wrote but was first made popular by Brook Benton in 1970; and "Steamy Windows", a hit for Tina Turner in 1989. "Polk Salad Annie" was also recorded by Elvis Presley and Tom Jones. Tony Joe White was born one of seven children and raised on a cotton farm near the small town of Oak Grove, Louisiana. When Tony Joe was 16, Charles, the oldest of the White children, brought home a Lightnin' Hopkins album and started teaching blues guitar to his younger brother.

As a child, he listened to not only local bluesmen and country singers but also to the distinctive cajun music of Louisiana, a hybrid of traditional musical styles introduced by French-Canadian settlers at the turn of the nineteenth century. White began performing at school dances, and after graduating, started playing in nightclubs in Louisiana and Texas. He formed his first band, Tony White & His Combo, while still in his teens. The three youngsters (White, 20, bassist Robert McGuffie, 19 and Jim Griffith, 22) played a nightclub in Kingsville, Texas for an uninterrupted engagement of eight months (six nights a week) in 1964.

That band was followed by Tony Joe and the Mojos and Tony's Twilights, and for the next seven years White worked the small clubs of the South before deciding to embark on a solo career singing his own compositions.