{"id":18153,"date":"2013-03-28T10:55:09","date_gmt":"2013-03-28T14:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=18153"},"modified":"2013-03-28T10:55:09","modified_gmt":"2013-03-28T14:55:09","slug":"story-songs-the-good-the-bad-and-mr-bojangles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/story-songs-the-good-the-bad-and-mr-bojangles\/","title":{"rendered":"Story Songs: The Good, The Bad, and &#8220;Mr. Bojangles&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jCJxfLQKEgM?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe>\n<p>I&#8217;m always amazed by well-crafted story songs. This goes back to one of my original favorite songs from childhood, <strong>The Band<\/strong>&#8216;s &#8220;The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.&#8221; I&#8217;ve never been much of a story teller. Stories are important. A well-told story set to great music simply dazzles me.<\/p>\n<p>I even appreciate story songs that I can&#8217;t stand, such as <a title=\"&quot;American Pie&quot;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/title-9\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Don McLean<\/strong>&#8216;s &#8220;American Pie&#8221;<\/a> and <a title=\"Billy Joel, Entertainment Through Pain\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/billy-joels-the-entertainer-no-redeeming-value\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Billy Joel<\/strong>&#8216;s &#8220;Piano Man.&#8221;<\/a> The latter, for all its <a title=\"The Best of Billy Joel, Relatively Speaking\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/least-objectionable-billy-joel-song-or-n\" target=\"_blank\">relative Joel merits<\/a>, quickly falls prey to the high bar set by telling a story song from the perspective of an old man when the songwriter is, in fact, a young man. That &#8220;when I wore a younger man&#8217;s clothes&#8221; line in &#8220;Piano Man,&#8221; for instance, is one of the song&#8217;s many deal-breakers for me.<\/p>\n<p>Last night, as &#8220;Piano Man&#8221; played on the radio after a fun dinner out with the family, even our 11-year-old son began cutting up on the lyrics. &#8220;The music&#8217;s good,&#8221; he said, &#8220;but the lyrics are stupid.&#8221; In the front seat my wife and I began talking about Olde Thyme-themed story songs of our youth. &#8220;Midnight at the Oasis&#8221; came on next, and we all got a chuckle out of that one, reminding ourselves that it was supposed to be silly.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8216;Mr. Bojangles&#8217;!&#8221; I exclaimed.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Yeah,&#8221; my wife replied, &#8220;what was the deal with &#8216;Mr. Bojangles&#8217;?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>What <em>was<\/em> the deal with &#8220;Mr. Bojangles&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s about Paul Robeson, right, who I know is a legendary and important multi-faceted entertainer and civil rights activist?<\/p>\n<p>No, it&#8217;s about an actor named Bill &#8220;Bojangles&#8221; <em>Robinson<\/em>, right?<\/p>\n<p>No, at least <a title=\"Mr. Bojangles\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mr._Bojangles_(song)\" target=\"_blank\">according to Wikipedia<\/a> it&#8217;s about a homeless man songwriter <strong>Jerry Jeff Walker<\/strong> met in the drunk tank who called himself &#8220;Mr. Bojangles&#8221; and then regaled Walker and their cellmates with tales and a tap dance that the songwriter turned into a gold record and signature song for <strong>Sammy Davis Jr<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Where does &#8220;Mr. Bojangles&#8221; rate on the scale of story songs? Is it good, bad, or somewhere in between? It&#8217;s always been a tough song for me to get my head around. How about other story songs? What separates the best from the worst?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m always amazed by well-crafted story songs. This goes back to one of my original favorite songs from childhood, The Band&#8216;s &#8220;The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.&#8221; I&#8217;ve never been much of a story teller. Stories are important. A well-told story set to great music simply dazzles me. I even appreciate story songs that <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/story-songs-the-good-the-bad-and-mr-bojangles\/' 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":[204],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18153"}],"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=18153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}