Polk Salad Annie

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Polk Salad Annie is a 1968 song by Tony Joe White that was first released in 1969.

content

The song tells the story of a poor Louisiana family who could barely afford to eat. Because most of the family members were no-nonsense (the father was lazy and complained of a back problem, her brothers stole watermelons from a neighboring vegetable patch, and her mother was a mean and vile woman who worked in a penal colony), Annie had to support the family. Annie was a tough girl who made the alligators look tame. Every afternoon she went out to gather polk salad in the fields. She dragged it home in a sack and cooked it, because that was about all they had for dinner.

history

The Louisiana-born singer and songwriter Tony Joe White introduced the United States to polk salad. This is from the leaves of pokeweed (Engl. Pokeweed ) made is not to be found in grocery stores, because its leaves are poisonous. To make them edible, they have to be boiled beforehand.

White, who grew up in Oak Grove in the immediate vicinity of the Mississippi River , described in an interview that one in three or four girls in this area was boyish like Annie described in the song and that she is representative of many girls in the region.

White, who grew up on a cotton farm, also revealed that he often eats Polk Salad himself: “It grows wild and can be picked and cooked at a certain time of the year like other greens. My mother told us that it contains iron and other things that were good for us kids, which is why we liked to eat it back then. I still eat it every spring today. "

But when the song came out, many of its teenage listeners thought polk salad was synonymous with marijuana and brought White a serving of weed because they thought it would give him pleasure. Then he had to explain again and again that it was not this plant that he sang about and at some point everyone had understood.

Cover versions

White, who often played songs by his idol Elvis Presley at the beginning of his musical career , was very impressed that Elvis Presley had again added his own first hit, Polk Salad Annie, to the program. In addition, Presley White, who was living in Memphis , Tennessee at the time , invited to his concert series in Las Vegas in 1970, where the two musicians often talked after the shows and asked Presley White to play him some blues numbers. The song Polk Salad Annie was part of the regular program of Presley's concert tours in the 1970s and was released on several records . It was also part of the two Elvis Presley documentary films Elvis - That's the Way It Is and Elvis On Tour .

Further cover versions of the song were recorded by Clarence Reid (first cover version from 1969), Sleepy LaBeef , Joe Dassin , Tom Jones , Little Tony and the Berlin band The BossHoss .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tony Joe White: Polk Salad Annie at SecondHandSongs.com
  2. ↑ Tony Joe White: Polk Salad Annie on YouTube
  3. ↑ Elvis Presley Lyrics: Polk Salad Annie
  4. ↑ Interview from songfacts.com with Tony Joe White (English; interview from October 31, 2013)
  5. ↑ EIN interview with Tony Joe White (accessed October 16, 2016)
  6. ^ Elvis Presley: Polk Salad Annie on YouTube
  7. ↑ Clarence Reid: Polk Salad Annie on YouTube
  8. ↑ Sleepy LaBeef: Polk Salad Annie on YouTube
  9. ↑ Joe Dassin: Polk Salad Annie (Lyrics)
  10. ↑ Tom Jones: Polk Salad Annie on YouTube
  11. ↑ Little Tony: Polk Salad Annie on YouTube
  12. ↑ The BossHoss live at KinkFM - Polk Salad Annie on YouTube

Web links