Australian singles charts:
Polk Salad Annie entered the Kent music charts on 9 August 1969 and peaked at #7. The song was #62 on the Top 100 of 1969.
Album:
The song is on Tony Joe White’s album Black and White.
Songwriter:
Tony Joe White
Producer:
Billy Swan
Record label of Australian release:
Monument
Songfacts:
The Louisiana singer/songwriter Tony Joe White acquainted America with the Southern cuisine polk salad on this track from his first album, which became a hit single in 1969. Polk salad is made from the leaves of the polkweed plant, but is not something you’ll find in grocery stores since it’s toxic – you have to boil it a few times before you can eat it. White explains in the song’s folksy introduction that polk is “a plant that grows out in the woods and the fields, and it looks something like a turnip green.” He then introduces Annie, a hardscrabble woman who made polk salad for her family, since that’s all they could afford to eat.
Read more: www.songfacts.com/facts/tony-joe-white/polk-salad-annie
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