“Rainy Night In Georgia” by Brook Benton

"Rainy Night in Georgia" belongs to Tony Joe White, who wrote it in 1967 and cut it first on his 1969 album Continued, but it was R&B singer Brook Benton who turned it into a hit in 1970, with Arif Mardin producing.

White built it out of memory. Fresh out of high school he had gone to Marietta, Georgia, where his sister lived, and landed a job behind the wheel of a highway department dump truck; rain meant no work, so he'd stay in and play guitar all night. Those nights came back to him about three months later, after he'd moved on to Texas, around the time hearing "Ode to Billie Joe" on the radio convinced him to write only about the life he knew.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.