The Big Easy List: Mr. Bojangles

Tweet

You survived yesterday’s shock. Here’s another one, although not of the same magnitude of hearing someone else do a song that’s eternally tied to Janis Joplin. Today’s song is more associated with someone else than the artist I’m using, but hey, this guy wrote it, so he’s entitled. Here’s today’s song. Mr. Bojangles - Jerry Jeff Walker There are people put on this earth to write one song that’ll outlive us all. Jerry Jeff Walker was one of those people, and this is the song. (He also gave us one of those albums “you should hear before you die,” 1973’s ¡Viva Terlingua!) Real life experiences will give us some of the greatest songs. In this case, Walker was arrested for D&D (drunk and disorderly) in the French Quarter. His jail cellmate was an old, alcoholic (“most the time I spend behind these county bars ‘cause I drinks a bit”) street dancer who only gave his name as “Bojangles.” The stories of Bojangles’ street performances and drinking that hindered any success he might have had weave through the song. Walker said the song is mostly about him because, while swapping stories in the jail, he discovered that “I didn’t have any [stories], he had ‘em all!” In the comments yesterday TeamFreak and I were discussing how “Me and Bobbie McGee” basically made Kris Kristofferson a worker by choice (because the royalties from that song ensured heh didn’t have to work). This is Walker’s money song. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band recorded this in 1969, scoring a top ten hit with their version. Despite all the chart victory and the recorded versions, the song may well be best associated with Sammy Davis Jr., who recorded it and ended up performing the song on countless variety and talk shows in the 1970s. He even performed it for President Nixon! Davis was a marvelous dancer, and he had a routine he performed while singing the song. For that reason, many consider this to be Sammy Davis Jr.’s song. It just a good — and truthfully, very sad — song. Mr. Bojangles Written by Jerry Jeff Walker Recorded by Jerry Jeff Walker From Mr. Bojangles, 1968 NEW ORLEANS LYRICS: I met him in a cell in New Orleans