Swamp-Rocker White: Sandpaper ‘n’ Molasses

Best-known for his 1969 white-soul smash “Polk Salad Annie,” semi-legendary Louisiana swamp-rocker Tony Joe White made his first local appearance in maybe a dozen years Friday at Club Lingerie and he didn’t play the hit . Didn’t perform “Rainy Night in Georgia,” the ’71 Brook Benton chartbuster that he authored, either. White gets tunes recorded on Hank Williams Jr. LPs these days, which may explain his reluctance to rest on his copyrights.

Clad all in black, bewhiskered and be-shaded, White put his four-man backup band through nearly 90 minutes worth of way down-home dance grooves, elevated by the leader’s John Lee Hooker-style country blues git-tar licks and his peaty, sandpaper ‘n’ molasses voice.

The night’s highlights included White’s only dip into his catalogue for his fine-point detailed ballad of race relations in the New South, ‘Willie and Laura Mae Jones,” and a wearily atmospheric, get-what-you-deserve-themed slowie titled “You’re Gonna Look Good in Blues,” but--in truth--’twas all the Rill Thang.