“Wet Night time in Georgia” is a track written by Tony Joe White in 1962 and popularized by R&B vocalist Brook Benton in 1970.
In a January 17, 2014 interview with music journalist Ray Shasho, Tony Joe White defined the thought course of behind the making of ”
Wet Night time in Georgia ” and “Polk Salad Annie”.
Once I received out of highschool I went to Marietta, Georgia, I had a sister residing there. I went down there to get a job and I used to be enjoying guitar too on the home and stuff. I drove a dump truck for the freeway division and when it might rain you didn’t must go to work. You possibly can keep residence and play your guitar and hangout all night time. So these ideas got here again to me after I moved on to Texas about three months later. I heard “Ode to Billie Joe” on the radio and I believed, man, how actual, as a result of I’m Billie Joe, I do know that life. I’ve been within the cotton fields. So I believed if I ever tried to jot down, I’m going to jot down about one thing I find out about. At the moment I used to be doing lots of Elvis and John Lee Hooker onstage with my drummer. No authentic songs and I hadn’t actually thought of it. However after I heard Bobbie Gentry I sat down and thought … effectively I find out about Polk as a result of I had ate a bunch of it and I knew about wet nights as a result of I spent lots of wet nights in Marietta, Georgia. So I used to be actual fortunate with my first tries to jot down one thing that was not solely actual and hit fairly near the bone, however lasted that lengthy. So it was sort of a information for me then on by life to all the time attempt to write what I find out about.
In 1969, after a number of years and not using a main hit, Benton had signed to a brand new document label, Cotillion Information (a subsidiary of Atlantic Information). Dropped at the eye of producer Jerry Wexler, Benton recorded the track in November 1969 with producer Arif Mardin session personnel current on the hit document included Billy Carter on Organ, Dave Crawford on piano, Cornell Dupree and Jimmy O’Rourke on guitar, Harold Cowart on bass, Tubby Ziegler on drums, and Toots Thielmans on harmonica.
Taken from his “come-back” album
Brook Benton
In the present day, the melancholy track grew to become an on the spot hit. Within the spring of 1970, the track had topped the Billboard Finest Promoting Soul Singles chart. It additionally reached quantity 4 on the Billboard Sizzling 100,[1] and quantity two on the Grownup Up to date chart. In Canada, the track made #2 on the RPM Journal Sizzling Singles chart.
The RIAA licensed the one gold for gross sales of 1 million copies. In 2004, it was ranked #498 on the Record of Rolling Stone’s 500 Biggest Songs of All Time. Wiki
