One of my best friends and a marvelous musician and carpenter and the most interesting dude I know, Matth (with an “h,” which adds to the interest, because he doesn’t know why it’s there either), responded to a recent effort about Tony Joe White’s unfortunate passing as Tony Joe was the author of “Poke Salad Annie,” one of our standards when Matth and me were in a band, actually several ‘bands,’ for lack of a better term, a long time ago.

“Jaybo (another numb-nuts friend who pilots planes all over the world, God help us all) and me were driving through Virginia the day he died,” Matth wrote to me.” I remember that his name came up – I think it was ‘cause Jaybo was singing some of Rainy Night in Georgia – the two or three lines that he knows.  So we sang some Polk Salad Annie – the two or three lines that I know.”

Matth continued:

“I wonder – why did he use the spelling ‘Polk’?  It was always poke salad (or sallet, for the more uppity portion of the crowd that might cook up a mess of it).  Dad used to bring home pokeweed that grew along the railroad tracks out by the airport.  It was always poke salad to us.  We didn’t have to eat it – Dad just kept that part of his past alive.  Brought dandelion greens home from the elementary school playground and cooked them.  I preferred the poke salad.  He actually used poke as a landscaping variety when he moved to SC.  Had two big pokeweeds growing right in front of the house, where normal folks would put a Japanese maple or something.

“And the eleventh President’s name wasn’t “James Poke”.  At least not in polite company.  And I don’t remember ever hearing you enunciate the “L” when we did the song.  ‘Course, maybe I was slurring your words.”

Matth has a solid point. On the album, the words typed on there are “Polk Salad Annie.” When I sang it and we played it, it was “Poke” Salad Annie. But Tony Joe wrote it, so he decides.

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