That Time He Shook David Letterman Up

My wife, through the years, she always had a camera with her for some reason,” Louisiana-born, Tennessee-based singer-songwriter Tony Joe White begins, talking about the book, Rattlesnakes & Cookies, he and his wife Leann have put together and will be bringing with him on his latest visit Down Under. “I never did notice it too much but she took pictures all through them years [in the ‘70s] – some pretty rare shots in there – and then some really rare recipes from grandmothers and aunts and others.

"Everywhere I go now, people come up and say, ‘Kiss my ass!'"

“So it ain’t a cookbook really; it’s almost like an era, a time of life, the early days when we first hooked up and I was playin’ clubs in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Right along there I write Polk Salad Annie and Rainy Night... – it was the early days of startin’ to write – and those were pictures from those times, least most of it.”

The book is sort of a timely segue out of the last track, Sweet Tooth, on his latest album, 2013’s Hoodoo, and the reissue of the three albums – 1971’s Tony Joe White, 1972’s The Train I’m On and 1973’s Homemade Ice Cream, all long out of print – as well as non-album singles he cut for the label in a 2CD set, The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings. White’s only Top Ten single, Polk Salad Annie, featured on 1968’s Black & White, the first of three albums with Monument Records.

“On a river down in the swamps on Louisiana, six, seven years old and picking cotton with my sisters and older brother, my mum and dad, and listenin’ to them playin’ music at night, you know, all I was thinkin’ about was hot afternoons. It’d be so hot, man, I’d be ready to get to the river and jump in and cool off. I never give much thought back then to thinking that this kind of thing, the songwritin’, the tourin’, would ever happen. I had a little premonition as I started writin’ because it wasn’t long after I did Rainy Night… that Brook Benton came out with it, and that’s the first time I ever heard another playin’ one of my songs.”

White recalls those simple childhood days in another Hoodoo cut, 9 Foot Sack. As for Polk Salad Annie, 40-odd years after it first made waves, Foo Fighters invited White to sing it with them on Late Show With David Letterman. “It really shook Letterman up for some reason. He come all the way across the stage to me, leaned over and said, ‘Man, I can’t breathe, what did you all do up here? Have I been hoodoo’d?’ And he turned around to the camera and said, ‘If I could do what this man just did with his guitar and his voice, I would tell everybody to kiss my ass!’  Everywhere I go now, people come up and say, ‘Kiss my ass!’” he chuckles, justifiably pleased with himself.