Background and career
Tony Joe White (July 23, 1943 – October 24, 2018), nicknamed the Swamp Fox, was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, best known for his 1969 hit "Polk Salad Annie" and for "Rainy Night in Georgia", which he wrote but which was first made popular by Brook Benton in 1970. He also wrote "Steamy Windows" and "Undercover Agent for the Blues", both hits for Tina Turner in 1989; those two songs came by way of Turner's producer at the time, Mark Knopfler, who was a friend of White. "Polk Salad Annie" was also recorded by Joe Dassin, Elvis Presley, Joe Bonamassa and Tom Jones.
White was born and raised on a cotton farm in Goodwill, Louisiana, an unincorporated community of West Carroll Parish, approximately ten miles southwest of Oak Grove. As a youth, he was enthralled by the music of Lightnin' Hopkins, and began his career as a member of Tony & the Mojos before moving to Texas to start Tony & the Twilights. He was inspired to begin writing songs after hearing Bobbie Gentry's 1967 hit "Ode to Billie Joe."
In 1967, White signed with Monument Records, which operated from a recording studio in the Nashville suburb of Hendersonville, Tennessee, and produced a variety of sounds, including rock and roll, country and western, and rhythm and blues. Billy Swan was his producer on his first three albums. Over the next three years, White released four singles with no commercial success in the U.S., although "Soul Francisco" was a hit in France. "Polk Salad Annie" had been released for nine months and written off as a failure by his record label when it finally entered the U.S. charts in July 1969. It climbed to the Top Ten by early August and eventually reached No. 8, becoming White's biggest hit. White's first album, 1969's Black and White, was recorded with Muscle Shoals/Nashville musicians David Briggs, Norbert Putnam, and Jerry Carrigan, and featured "Willie and Laura Mae Jones" and "Polk Salad Annie", along with Jimmy Webb's "Wichita Lineman". "Willie and Laura Mae Jones" was covered by Dusty Springfield and released as a single, later added to reissues of her 1969 album Dusty in Memphis.
Three more singles quickly followed, all minor hits, and White toured with Steppenwolf, Anne Murray, Sly & the Family Stone, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Carpenters and other major rock acts of the 1970s, playing in France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and England. In 1973, White appeared in the film Catch My Soul, a rock-opera adaption of Shakespeare's Othello. White played and sang four songs and composed seven for the musical. In late September 1973, White was recruited by record producer Huey Meaux to sit in on the Memphis sessions that became Jerry Lee Lewis's Southern Roots: Back Home to Memphis album. These sessions were a three-day, around-the-clock party, which not only reunited the original MGs (Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn and Al Jackson, Jr. of Booker T. and the MGs fame) for the first time in three years, but also featured Carl Perkins, Mark Lindsay (of Paul Revere & the Raiders), and Wayne Jackson plus The Memphis Horns.
From 1976 to 1983, White released three more albums, all on different labels. Trying to combine his own swamp-rock sound with the popular disco music at the time, the results were not successful and White gave up his career as a singer and concentrated on writing songs. During this time frame, he collaborated with American expat Joe Dassin on his only English-language album, Home Made Ice Cream, and its French-language counterpart, Blue Country.
In 1989, White produced one non-single track on Tina Turner's Foreign Affair album, the rest of the album being produced by Dan Hartman. Playing a variety of instruments on the album, he also wrote four songs, including the title song and the hit single "Steamy Windows". As a result of this he became managed by Roger Davies, who was Turner's manager at the time, and he obtained a new contract with Polydor. The resulting album, 1991's Closer to the Truth, was a commercial success and put White back in the spotlight. He released two more albums for Polydor: The Path of a Decent Groove and Lake Placid Blues, which was co-produced by Roger Davies. In the 1990s, White toured Germany and France with Joe Cocker and Eric Clapton, and in 1992 he played the Montreux Festival. During the late 1990s, White also toured with Waylon Jennings. In 1996, Tina Turner released the song "On Silent Wings" written by White.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
