Tony Joe White

Tony Joe White grew up on his family's cotton farm in Goodwill, near Oak Grove, listening to Lightnin' Hopkins. He began writing songs after hearing Bobbie Gentry's 1967 hit Ode to Billie Joe. Polk Salad Annie came out in 1969 and sat about nine months before it entered the charts in July, then climbed to number 8, his biggest hit as a performer. Elvis Presley, Tom Jones and Joe Bonamassa recorded it. Brook Benton made Rainy Night in Georgia popular in 1970, and Tina Turner had hits with two of his songs in 1989. White died in 2018.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Louisiana State Cotton Museum — 11 mi
  A state museum on US 65 north of Lake Providence with a sharecropper's cabin, a commissary and a gin house, in the parish where John H. Scott worked for Black voting rights.
• Grant's Canal, Lake Providence — 13 mi
  About 1,000 feet of the ditch Union troops dug in early 1863 to get Grant's army around Vicksburg, with a boardwalk, a pier and a visitor center in the Byerley House.
• Poverty Point World Heritage Site — 16 mi
  Louisiana's only World Heritage Site: six C-shaped ridges, a 43-acre plaza and Mound A, raised on Macon Ridge between about 1700 and 1100 BCE.

More markers nearby

• Oak Grove Community House — 0.3 mi
• Galloway Place Mound — 11 mi
• Lake Providence Confederate Monument — 12 mi
• Soldiers' Rest — 12 mi