{"id":15395,"date":"2012-09-06T09:22:24","date_gmt":"2012-09-06T13:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=15395"},"modified":"2012-09-06T09:24:25","modified_gmt":"2012-09-06T13:24:25","slug":"joe-south-dead-at-72-never-promised-us-a-rose-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/joe-south-dead-at-72-never-promised-us-a-rose-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe South, Dead at 72, Never Promised Us a Rose Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3M9se64HoTg?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>Until reading about the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/09\/06\/arts\/music\/joe-south-singer-and-songwriter-dies-at-72.html\" target=\"_blank\">recently deceased Southern pop-soul-country singer-songwriter <strong>Joe South<\/strong><\/a> I had no idea he wrote &#8220;Hush,&#8221; the best song <strong>Deep Purple<\/strong> ever recorded. Did you know that? This puts a serious dent in what little admiration I have for Deep Purple, but that&#8217;s beside the point.<\/p>\n<p>I knew South first and best as the man behind the first song and second-best version of any song called &#8220;Games People Play&#8221; (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=p2_wBpoyrPM\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>The Spinners<\/strong>&#8216; different song known by the same name<\/a> being the best version). Learning that South wrote not only &#8220;Hush&#8221; but a favorite country-pop song of my youth, &#8220;(I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden,&#8221; increases my appreciation of the man&#8217;s body of work. What a great title\/lyric that song has; I think of it a few times a year when I hear my kids, friends, or coworkers whine about any of life&#8217;s expected hardships.<\/p>\n<p>I also learned that South&#8217;s career stretched back to the 1958 novelty hit \u201cThe Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor&#8221; and that he wrote <strong>Billy Joe Royal<\/strong>&#8216;s &#8220;Down in the Boondocks.&#8221; And he played guitar on <strong>Bob Dylan<\/strong>&#8216;s <em>Blonde on Blonde<\/em> and some of <strong>Aretha Franklin&#8217;<\/strong>s greatest hits. Not bad for a guy I&#8217;d had pegged as a sub-<strong>Box Tops<\/strong> 1-hit wonder.<\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PojXf-spKKM?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Until reading about the\u00a0recently deceased Southern pop-soul-country singer-songwriter Joe South I had no idea he wrote &#8220;Hush,&#8221; the best song Deep Purple ever recorded. Did you know that? This puts a serious dent in what little admiration I have for Deep Purple, but that&#8217;s beside the point. I knew South first and best as the <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/joe-south-dead-at-72-never-promised-us-a-rose-garden\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[170],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15395"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}