“Rainy Night in Georgia” (1970) – Brook Benton * Written by Tony Joe White * 45: “Rainy Night in Georgia” / “Where Do I Go from Here” * LP: Brook Benton Today * Produced by Arif Mardin * Label: Atlantic
With no top ten hits since 1962’s “Hotel Happiness,” Benton took a shot with a song by Tony Joe White, who’d reached #8 with the deep southern “Polk Salad Annie” in 1969. The resulting #4 smash not only became a career-defining moment for Benton, but also for the prolific producer-arranger Arif Mardin. Dripping in aching strings and a lonely piano, the song transferred a detectable sense of resignation to the airwaves, as if to signal the end of a more youthful and carefree era. Benton’s next two 45s were versions of the new Sinatra signature song “My Way” and Joe South’s “Don’t It Make You Want to Go Home,” each of which seemed to verify and emphasize Benton’s elegiac mindframe in “Rainy Night in Georgia.”