Royal is survived by his daughter, Savannah Royal mother Mary Royal brother Jack Royal stepsons Trey and Joey Rivenbark and two grandchildren. “It was the greatest place to grow up in the world. Parrot 9727 HOUSTON-Dean Martin, Reprise 0393 DOWN IN THE BOONDOCKS-Billy Joe Royal, Columbia 43305 IT'S A MAN DOWN THERE-G.
“Everybody knew everybody, and everybody liked everybody,” he said in the 2010 Journal-Constitution interview. He remembered his time there, before national fame, with fondness. In 2010, he announced he would end his last official tour with a concert in Marietta, not far from the school that once banned him. Royal went on to do well with country songs such as “I’ll Pin a Note on Your Pillow,” “Tell It Like It Is” and “‘Till I Can’t Take It Anymore.” The song had nothing to do with space travel, but given its title, radio stations stopped playing it. It looked like he might have a big hit in 1986 with “Burned Like a Rocket.” But just as the song was gaining in popularity, the Challenger space shuttle tragedy occurred. Royal moved back to Georgia and eventually landed in Nashville, where he worked to revive his career. “Kenny Rogers lived down the street from me,” Royal recalled, “and Kenny was tearing the world up singing country music. But he noticed that other singers who had pop hits had successfully switched genres. I was getting a divorce,” he told the Journal-Constitution. Royal moved to Los Angeles, but his brand of pop music was falling out of favor. He graduated to bigger live shows, including tours produced by Dick Clark, and in 1970, Royal played Las Vegas, where he met and even hung out with Presley. It was the highest he ever reached on the pop charts, but Royal also found success with other songs in that era, including “Cherry Hill Park” and “Hush.” With its repetitive, “down in the boondocks” reframe that got stuck in listeners’ minds, the song reached No. We cut it on a three-track machine - the most primitive thing in the world.” “I guess people related to poor people,” Royal told the Chicago Tribune in 1990. Most importantly to his career, he worked with songwriter and producer Joe South, who wrote “Down in the Boondocks” - a song about a pair of young lovers from opposite sides of the tracks. I had to stick to it because I’ve never done anything else.“For a kid, I can’t tell you how that felt.” “The old voice has stood up, you know.” He added: “The other thing is, this is all I’ve ever done. “I say this with all humility,” he said on his website. Royal toured regularly in recent years, often with B. He is survived by a daughter, Savannah Royal two stepsons, Trey and Joe Rivenbark his mother, Mary Royal and a brother, Jack. Royal’s three marriages ended in divorce. In the 1970s he performed regularly at resorts in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe, Calif. Royal was invited to join the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars, a package tour that included the Turtles, the Shirelles, Peter and Gordon, and Tom Jones. Royal to a contract.Īfter the success of “Down in the Boondocks,” Mr. Bill Lowery, a well-connected music producer and publisher in Atlanta, heard the record and brought it to Columbia, which signed Mr.
South asked him to make a demonstration record of “Down in the Boondocks,” which he hoped to sell to Gene Pitney. He was singing at a Cincinnati nightclub, Guys and Dolls, when Mr.
Royal formed a rock band, the Corvettes, in high school and was later hired to perform at the Bamboo Ranch in Savannah, Ga., an enormous dance hall that booked top country and soul acts. “When he made it so big, all us Southern boys thought maybe we had a shot, too,” he said in an interview posted on his website. The success of Elvis Presley galvanized him. He began singing in grade school, learned to play steel guitar and was soon performing with his uncle’s country-and-western band on local radio. He followed up with “ I’ll Pin a Note to Your Pillow,” a cover version of the Aaron Neville hit “ Tell It Like It Is” and others.īilly Joe Royal was born on April 3, 1942, in Valdosta, Ga., and grew up in Marietta, near Atlanta. As a gesture of respect, D.J.s stopped playing the song. Royal turned out a steady stream of country hits, beginning with “ Burned Like a Rocket,” which reached the country Top 10 in 1985 and was climbing when the space shuttle Challenger exploded. In the 1980s, after signing with Atlantic Records in Nashville, Mr. South, “ Hush” and “ I Knew You When,” and ended the decade in the Top 20 with “ Cherry Hill Park” (1969). He hit the charts with two other songs by Mr.
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