I was touring with all these people that I’d heard on the radio and we were becoming friends. “We did a show every night for three months with stars like Tom Jones, Herman’s Hermits, Jackie DeShannon and Neil Diamond. “After Boondocks hit, I got a call to tour with Dick Clark’s Cavalcade of Stars,” Royal said. I’ll hold my head up like a king and I never, never will look back.” And “Down in the Boondocks” suddenly gave Royal a measure of fame and fortune. Royal’s lilting tenor gave the song a determined sort of innocence, as he sang, “One fine day I’ll find a way to move from this old shack. Written and produced by South, it was the star-crossed love story of a poor boy and a rich girl. Royal’s working class Valdosta roots show up in his first and biggest hit, “Down in the Boondocks,” which peaked at number nine on the Top 40 chart in 1965. So if he could do it, maybe we could do it.” “He was our inspiration - a Southern boy from humble beginnings. Like so many other young singers from the South, Royal’s first hero was Elvis Presley. The second time he was there he put his arm around me and said, ‘You just keep getting better and better.’ For a kid, I can’t tell you how that felt.” “I got to meet these people and learn from them,” Royal said. That’s also when Royal and South began cutting demos and low-budget singles and honing their hybrid rock-country-soul sound.
King, the Drifters, Chuck Berry, Roy Orbison and George Jones. Royal and South roomed together and performed with rock and roll, rhythm and blues and country stars, including the likes of Fats Domino, B.B. He spent two years there, working six days a week and playing five sets a night, with his friend, songwriter, producer and guitarist, Joe South. In the late ’50s, Royal was making $75 a week singing at the Anchorage Club in the Clermont Hotel in Atlanta, when he was offered a job at the Bamboo Ranch in Savannah. Royal’s family moved to Marietta when he was in grade school, and as a teenager he joined the Georgia Jubilee musical revue in East Point, which included Ray Stevens and Jerry Reed. “And for some reason, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. “They had a radio show in Valdosta and they let me sing,” Royal recalled. I can sing and ride a horse, and that’s about it.”īorn in Valdosta in 1942, Royal began singing at a young age, first appearing with his uncles’ country-western band.
“My agent told me they wanted me because I look good riding a horse,” Royal said. Royal, who admitted he’d always been afraid to fly, laughed as he described the unlikely nine-hour journey.
BILLY JOE ROYAL CONCERTS MOVIE
Recently, he called on his way to Pigeon Forge, Tenn., where he was driving to a meet a movie director to discuss a part in an upcoming western. After more than 20 years in Nashville, and stints in Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Los Angeles before that, Royal now lives in coastal North Carolina, to be near his teenage daughter.
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