NEW ALBUMS

Smoke From The Chimney

By Stephen Deusner

Reel deal: White’s bare-bones tapes are resurrected

TIMOTHY NORRIS/WIREIMAGE, ALYSSE GAFKJEN

EASY EYE SOUND  8/10

Swamp Fox’s first posthumous LP. 

“BUBBA JONES” is a strange swamp-rock saga about a man just trying to catch a fish. As story-songs go, there’s not very much to it, but Tony Joe White manages to invest it with some humour and some gravity. Over a bluesy guitar lick and a humid groove, he savours the back-country details, even telling you the brand of reel and the size of the boat, and he makes a meal – an entire feast, actually – out of the burbling syllables “bubbabubbabubbabubba”. What might sound like a low-stakes character sketch instead becomes a study in disappointment and resilience, with White playing an Ahab of the bayou. Even without the sneaking suspicion that the fisherman might be kin to the characters in White’s oft-covered classic “Willie And Laura Mae Jones”, “Bubba Jones” is a worthy addition to this singer-songwriter’s idiosyncratic catalogue, no matter that he never released it during his lifetime.

It’s tempting to read something metaphorical into that fisherman’s struggle, as though that large-mouth bass might actually symbolise a hit song or some professional accolade. After all, White’s most notable songs were bigger hits for other artists than they ever were for him: Dusty Springfield recorded “Willie And Laura Mae Jones” in 1969, Brook Benton nearly took “Rainy Night In Georgia” to the top of the pop charts in 1970, and Elvis Presley made “Polk Salad Annie” into a live staple during his final tours. Despite his instantly recognisable voice and his facility with details of Southern life, White never enjoyed commercial success commensurate with his talent and eccentricities, but he kept recording and writing and touring until his death in 2018. Today he’s too big to be a cult artist, but not quite mainstream either.

“Bubba Jones” was one of countless unreleased songs he left behind, most of them recorded on reel-to-reel with just his voice and acoustic guitar. His son Jody White discovered and digitised them, eventually handing several over to The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach to flesh out into fully realised tracks. Nine of them have been collected on Smoke From The Chimney, White’s first posthumous release and a stirring portrait of a singular artist. In fact, Jody White had been trying to persuade his father to record with Auerbach for a decade, but Tony Joe was particular about his songs and preferred laying them down at his home studio outside Nashville.