Finally a pop station in Tampa (Florida) played it and Atlantic Records called and I got a deal. 1 in that market so we went back to Nashville but still couldn't get a deal. Then, when markets started playing it, it became No. I went back down to see Bill Lowry and he put it on an indie label and we worked that thing like no other from doing rodeos to singing the National Anthem - anything to get anyone to play it. I moved back to Georgia and began driving up to Nashville and found this song called 'Burn Like a Rocket' and I loved it but I couldn't give it away. 1 hits in the country world, so I thought, you know I am going to give it one more shot. Well, about two months later "Lucille' came out and he took over the world and I was too embarrassed to go over and say anything else to him after that. I called a friend of mine and he discouraged me not to do it. Kenny came over one day and said he had this production deal from United Artists and asked if I wanted to do some songs he had and if I didn't like them, then he would just throw them out.
#I want to hear music by billy joe royal tv
He was doing a TV show at the time, back in 1977. Seriously though, I moved to California and lived in the same neighborhood as Kenny Rogers. Back in 1970 when "Cherry Hill Park' came out, nothing really charted after that. What do you consider your greatest accomplishment? A southern boy who made it big and became the king so we thought we had a shot at being something. And you know what? I never took a photo with him. In those days you played a month at a time at those casinos and about a year or so later, we both played at the Lake Tahoe and he was playing the main room and I was playing the lounge and our names were on the sign together in red and I would kill for a picture of that sign.Ī friend of mine that played on 'Down in the Boondocks', Henry Gordon Jr., left Neil Diamond's band and began playing bass for Elvis, and I was backstage every single night. I just thought he was being nice by inviting us back. I went to see one of his shows with Bill Lowry, who produced Joe South's "Walk a Mile in My Shoes,' and we got invited to his dressing room. I remember the date like it was yesterday (Jan. How did you meet the King of Rock-n-Roll? We are the same age, knew all the same people and basically had the same background. About two years ago, we had the same agent so we started touring together and called the show the Raindrops and Boondocks Tour. I played a show in Houston in 1965 with Roy Orbison, Marty Robbins and B.J. We met in your neck of the woods, in Houston. I got a call from Dick Clark and it changed my life. 1 in Cincinnati overnight and then it just blew up across the country. And then Joe (South) called me and said he had a song for me called "Down in the Boondocks' so I flew back to Atlanta to cut it.
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President Kennedy was assassinated and he wanted to do a tribute show at Cincinnati Gardens but I had never worked in front of kids before.Īll of sudden, all the kids are following me around town. I was working at a club and met a disc jockey named Dusty Roads who came out to one of my shows. For some reason I wanted to leave Savannah and left for Cincinnati. “A friend of mine had gone to Philadelphia somewhere and looked over and saw Cherry Hill and then just said, ‘Hey, Cherry Hill, merry hill,’ ” Royal said.I did the craziest thing. Perhaps not the town itself, actually, but at least the name. Royal didn’t write the song himself - it was penned by Robert Nix and Billy Gilmore - but in a 2008 interview with, he confirmed that, yes, the song was indeed inspired by Cherry Hill, N.J. The girl in the song, “Mary Hill,” “was such a thrill after dark, in Cherry Hill Park,” until she got married, and “since that day, it ain’t been the same,” sings Royal. In 1969, a revolutionary time for popular music, Billy Joe Royal, a country pop star and a Georgia native, made the national Top 20 with a silly, mildly salacious little ditty called “Cherry Hill Park,” which had more in common with Fats Domino’s 1956 hit “Blueberry Hill” than anything else going on in popular music during that era (except maybe The Turtles’ 1967 hit “Happy Together,” whose chorus its own chorus resembles a bit). The cover of Billy Joe Royal’s 1969 album, “Cherry Hill Park.”