SACD Tony Joe White – Tony Joe White

Tony Joe White as a hybrid stereo SACD from Analogue Productions’ Acoustic Sounds 40th Anniversary Series, mastered to DSD from the original master tape. The programme opens with “They Caught The Devil And Put Him In Jail In Eudora, Arkansas” – and the stories begin right there.

Louisiana stories, Memphis surroundings

“They Caught The Devil And Put Him In Jail In Eudora, Arkansas” – what an opening. Before a single note, the title conjures small towns, unusual characters and stories with uneasy edges. Tony Joe White took that storyteller’s instinct to Warner Bros. for this self-titled 1971 album, his fourth and his first for the label. The man who wrote “Polk Salad Annie” put his own name on the cover and let the stories introduce him.

The sessions took place in December 1970 at Sounds of Memphis and Ardent in Memphis, with Peter Asher producing and Terry Manning engineering; according to the publisher, Asher had just produced James Taylor’s early hits for the same label. That setting brought White into a world where guitar music, soul and rhythm and blues met as a matter of course. Louisiana remained the root of his writing, while Memphis gave him new ways to present it.

A storyteller at the centre

White sings and plays guitar and harmonica. Robert McGuffie on bass, Sammy Creason on drums and Mike Utley on piano and organ form the core band. Titles like “The Daddy”, “Five Summers For Jimmy” and “A Night In The Life Of A Swamp Fox” show how much this album lives on people and places – following the turns of a story is part of the pleasure.

White wrote nearly all of the songs himself; Albert Frank Beddoe’s “Copper Kettle” brings an outside song into his collection of stories. The album holds together through the narrator’s point of view rather than one uniform mood. Listen to how closely a vocal phrase and the guitar figure beneath it are tied together – that is the key to White’s songwriting.

More colours around the guitar

The Memphis Horns add trumpets, saxophones and trombone, and Roger Hopps contributed string arrangements. Horns, organ and harmonica each have a role of their own: they give the production several ways to frame a song.

That combination makes the album a special point in White’s catalogue. His move to Warner Bros. came with a production that welcomes many instrumental textures while keeping the songwriter firmly at the centre. If you know him mainly through one famous song, this is your invitation to spend time with a whole cast of his characters and places.

The hybrid stereo SACD from Analogue Productions

CAPR 026 SA is a hybrid stereo SACD from Analogue Productions’ Acoustic Sounds 40th Anniversary Series. According to the publisher, it was mastered to DSD from the original master tape. The SACD layer plays on SACD-capable players, the CD layer on any conventional CD player. The publisher lists ten tracks; “Black Panther Swamps” from the eleven-track original album is not among them.

You order from Michael 45 in Germany. We arrange the US import and ship from Hilden.

More from the series: Acoustic Sounds 40th Anniversary Series

Also in another edition: Tony Joe White

Customer question: Buying Analogue Productions records in Europe

Musicians

Documented selection of participating musicians. Personnel may vary by track; this list does not claim to be complete.