Today’s classic song of the day is “Mr. Bojangles.” The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band released this song as a single in September of 1970 and it rose to #9 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Cash Box Top 100.
“Mr. Bojangles” was written and originally recorded by Jerry Jeff Walker. The song was inspired by and somewhat documents a real incident in Walker’s life. Back in 1965, Walker was in a New Orleans jail for public intoxication when he met a homeless man who called himself “Mr. Bojangles” to conceal his true identity from the police. The two men and others in the cell got to talking, as guys in jail do, but when Mr. Bojangles told a story about his dog, the mood in the room turned heavy. Someone else in the cell asked for something to lighten the mood, and the old man obliged with a tap dance. That’s pretty much how the song goes, and sometimes there’s nothing more endearing than the simple truth.
Walker released his version of “Mr. Bojangles” in 1968 but it only rose to #77 on the Billboard Hot 100. Several other artists recorded it, including Frankie Lane, Harry Belafonte, Bob Dylan, Harry Nilsson, Neil Diamond, Nina Simone, and Sammy Davis Jr. The version that became a hit, however, was the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s cover. That version was recorded for their 1970 album, Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy.
Jerry Jeff Walker was a singer-songwriter who was a fixture on the Austin music scene and part of that whole Outlaw Country thing. He started out as a folkie in Greenwich Village in the mid-1960s but moved to Austin in the early 1970s. While he was a prolific songwriter and performer, recording more than three dozen albums over the course of his career, “Mr. Bojangles” was his best-known composition. He passed away in 2020 from throat cancer, age 78.
