All these week we’ve been featuring songs with a person’s name in the title, and our final classic song of the day of that type this week is Jim Stafford’s “My Girl Bill.” Released as a single in April of 1974, this light-hearted little ditty went all the way to #12 on the Billboard Hot 100, #10 on the Cash Box Top 100, and #9 on Billboard’s Easy Listening list.
“My Girl Bill” was written and performed by Mr. Stafford. The lyrics deliberately mislead you into thinking that the singer is talking to a guy named Bill who’s the “girl” in their same-sex relationship, when in reality (SPOILER ALERT) he’s talking to a guy named Bill about his girl, with whom they share affections for. This is clarified in the final line of the song, which can be punctuated “She’s my girl, Bill.”
Jim Stafford was known for his somewhat humorous songs, including “Spiders & Snakes” and “Wildwood Weed.” He was popular enough to score a six-week summer variety series, imaginatively titled The Jim Stafford Show, on the ABC network in 1975. He also co-hosted ABC’s Those Amazing Animals (with Burgess Meredith and Priscilla Presley) from 1980-1981 and hosted 56 episodes of the syndicated Nashville on the Road series around the same time period. In 1990, he opened and headlined at the Jim Stafford Theater in Branson, Missouri. (The theater closed its doors during the COVID pandemic in 2020.) He’s 81 years old now, still living in Branson.
Today’s daily bonus video of the day, then, is Jim Stafford performing “My Girl Bill” on the UK Gold television program. Clever wordplay on this one, isn’t it?
