Tuesday April 12, 2022 “Down in the Boondocks” Billy Joe Royal
It’s day two of connecting the musical dots and here’s how the game works. Yesterday it was The Animals with “Don’t Bring Me Down” and today we are “Down in the Boondocks”. Now you see it for all its foolishness…?
Gotta start today with a boondock…what exactly is a boondock? According to the Miriam-Webster Dictionary a boondock “is a remote, thinly settled rural area”
Billy Joe Royal had been in bands since he was sixteen and was a friend of singer/songwriter Joe South who wrote many successful hit songs and had a couple of successful solo singles. South had written a song he was hoping to get Gene Pitney to record and asked Royal to record the demo for “Down in the Boondocks” to present to Pitney’s label.
When the demo turned up at Pitney’s record label Columbia they immediately signed Royal to a six year contract and released the song as his first top ten single. Billy Joe Royal had a few additional top forty hits like “I Knew You When” and the lyrically interesting “Cherry Hill Park”. Joe South would have a Grammy winning solo number one song with “Games People Play” and would write “I Never Promised You Rose Garden” recorded by dozens of artists.
Just to round it out Gene Pitney, who never recorded “Down in the Boondocks”, did have more than a dozen top forty hits and wrote songs like “He’s A Rebel” for the Crystals and “Rubber Ball” for Bobby Vee.
Stay safe and well…and nothing to do with our connect the dots but I bet Sloopy, Patches, the Four Seasons “Rag Doll” and Johnny Rivers and his “Poor Side of Town” girlfriend all lived down in the boondocks with Billy Joe Royal.