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Junk in the Trunk: Drive’s Daily Blog for Friday November 21

Published: November 21, 2014

Each day, Rich Terfry and Radio 2 Drive wraps up your day with music and stories about the interesting things going on in the world. Today, Pete Morey sits in the hot seat as Rich tours his new album, Neverlove.

PETE'S PICK: Tony Alvon & The Belairs - "Sexy Coffee Pot"

JUNK IN THE TRUNK:

The lamest escalator stunt you've ever seen:

Ron literally drops in on Billy to say hello:

Why Winter is the Justin Bieber of seasons:

Dad makes a drum beat with his son's back and laughter:

REAR-VIEW MIRROR:

Three times a week, Rich Terfry looks back in our Rear-view Mirror at a great song from the good ol’ days. Today, Pete Morey steps in for Rich and gives the story behind Tony Joe White's "Polk Salad Annie".

LISTEN

AUDIOPete Morey takes you to the American South with the story behind "Polk Salad Annie"

They say you should write what you know. Well, the singer Tony Joe White wrote the biggest hit of his whole career, "Polk Salad Annie," about something he knew all too well: a Southern dish eaten by the poorest of folks when times were hard. They called it Poke Sallet.

Let's rewind. Tony Joe grew up in the swamplands of Goodwill Louisiana. He was the youngest of seven siblings and was raised picking cotton on the family farmstead.
It was a tough life and to feed the family he’d be sent out into the swamp, where alligators lurked, to cut a bag full of wild growin' American Pokeweed. His mom would whip up a mess of the leafy greens, which tasted a bit like bitter spinach. It had many names: poke sallet, Polk Salad, pokeweed, even just polk.

As you can imagine, times were often tough. White had a belly full of polk weed. It was a taste he’d remember his whole lif,e but he was hungry for more than pokeweed and pickin cotton on the farm. He’d always enjoyed the Cajun music he heard on local louisiana stations, but when he was 16 he was given a Lightning Hopkins record by his brother.

It inspired him to pick up his father's guitar and learn how to play. He stared at high school dances, then nightclubs, and by the '60s he was on his way to Nashville, the song-writing capital of America. His first tune was a groovy hit about the hippy scene happening on the west coast. It was called "Soul Francisco."

Bizarrely, the song was a freak hit in France, but a big flop state side. It was hard to believe a southern country boy singing about hippy-dom. It wasn’t real. One night, Tony Joe White heard Bobbie Gentry's hit "Ode to Billie Joe" on the radio. He thought, "man, how real is that!" He was Billie Joe in the song, he knew that life, he’d been in the cotton fields.

So Tony Joe sat down and decided to write what he did know about. He wrote about the south. He wrote about the colourful down home characters of his childhood, he wrote about poke sallet because he’d eaten a bunch of it. The subject matter was close to the bone. It came from his guts.

In 1969 he recorded "Polk Salad Annie" in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. It featured the story of a girl, tough as alligator hide, and her southern family. Months went by as the song repeatedly failed to get airplay. After 9 months, the label in the north were about to write it off as a failure when they got a message from down south. People in Texas nightclubs and record stores had a taste for the song's strong southern flavours and wanted to get their hands on copies of the tune. Soon, the Nashville record label was sending every copy they had of polk salad Annie down south. One copy made it ways into the hands of Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll.

He loved it. "Polk Salad Annie" became a live favourite and in 1970 Elvis covered the song. After this nod of approval from the King, White became king of the swamp and the pioneer of swamprock. From that point on he’d only write about what he knew and it was a served him well his whole career. And if it's good enough for Elvis, it's good enough for you.

Here are some other great editions of Rear-view Mirror:

R Dean Taylor/There's a Ghost in My House

The Ronettes/Walking in the Rain

Buddy Holly/Peggy Sue

Stan Getz & Astrud Gilberto/The Girl From Ipanema

Norman Greenbaum/Spirit in the Sky

Elvis Presley/Blue Suede Shoes

Johnny Cash/Ring of Fire

The Kinks/You Really Got Me

The Beatles/Yesterday

Al Green/Let's Stay Together

Simon and Garfunkel/The Boxer