{"id":5739,"date":"2025-05-10T08:32:51","date_gmt":"2025-05-10T12:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=5739"},"modified":"2025-05-10T09:07:15","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T13:07:15","slug":"down-in-the-boondocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/down-in-the-boondocks\/","title":{"rendered":"Down in the Boondocks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Down in the Boondocks\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xNilbppB6R0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I must have heard Billy Joe Royal&#8217;s hit version of &#8220;Down in the Boondocks&#8221; in the 1970s, when I was often listening to my local <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-5742\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Down-in-the-Boondocks-e1746741521155.jpg?resize=190%2C257&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"190\" height=\"257\" \/>oldies station, WROR &#8212; &#8220;the golden great 98&#8221; &#8212; but I don&#8217;t remember taking much notice of it, since I was mostly listening for when they played classic doo-wop, or\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/run-red-run\/\"> the Coasters<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/maybellene\/\">Chuck Berry<\/a>&#8230; I was more into the &#8217;50s stuff. Then in the 1980s, while I was wandering around Europe and had lots of time to experiment with guitar techniques while waiting for hitchhiking rides and walking down country roads, I began fooling around with this arrangement and found that although I&#8217;d never tried to learn it, I knew all the words &#8212; one sure sign of a well-written song.<\/p>\n<p>Good as it is, I thought of it more as a guitar exercise than anything else &#8212; I&#8217;d worked out my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/iko-iko\/\">Congolese-flavored version of &#8220;Iko Iko&#8221;<\/a> and was trying to come up with other ways to play Caribbean and Latin-flavored rhythms, and I guess this was my attempt at a kind of half-assed reggae feel. Anyway, I never performed it but always enjoyed playing it, without knowing anything more about it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Joe-South.bmp\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-5741 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Joe-South-e1746740091834.bmp\" alt=\"\" width=\"164\" height=\"184\" \/><\/a>So I only just found out that it was written by Joe South, a southern guitar and songwriting maverick who&#8217;s probably best known for his hit, &#8220;The Games People Play,&#8221; but also wrote this one and lots of others, and produced Royal&#8217;s record, and played guitar on a bunch of sessions, including the memorable tremolo intro on Aretha Franklin&#8217;s &#8220;Chain of Fools.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Other than that, the song pretty much speaks for itself: it&#8217;s a classic poor-boy-in-love-with-rich-girl story, somewhat more optimistic than Hank Williams&#8217;s &#8220;Mansion on the Hill,&#8221; and it&#8217;s fun to dig into the lyric&#8230; but I still mostly play it because it took a long time to get the guitar technique so it felt moderately comfortable, and I love the way the slapping\/picking feels under my hands and haven&#8217;t found another song that fits as well with this style.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I must have heard Billy Joe Royal&#8217;s hit version of &#8220;Down in the Boondocks&#8221; in the 1970s, when I was often listening to my local oldies station, WROR &#8212; &#8220;the golden great 98&#8221; &#8212; but I don&#8217;t remember taking much notice of it, since I was mostly listening for when they played classic doo-wop, or\u00a0 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/down-in-the-boondocks\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Down in the Boondocks<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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Of the few I managed to work out, my favorite was \"Ragtime Millionaire,\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/yazoo-guitar-wizards-e1462841648853.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1066,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/book-of-love\/","url_meta":{"origin":5739,"position":3},"title":"Book of Love (Sha Na Na\/The Monotones)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 11, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A classic vocal-group oldie from the Monotones, via Sha Na Na, thanks to my sister Debbie, with some stray thoughts on the pleasures of singing this stuff.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Sha Na Na","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Sha-Na-Na-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5446,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/north-country-girl\/","url_meta":{"origin":5739,"position":4},"title":"Girl from the North Country (Bob Dylan)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 2, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"This is another one I've known forever, and don't even remember learning. It's kind of an anomaly in Dylan's oeuvre, since\u00a0 he tended to be better at break-up songs, and in particular nasty break-up songs (\"Don't Think Twice,\" for example), than at love songs. I've already posted one noteworthy exception\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Echo-Helstrom-e1730414234748.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4122,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/future-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":5739,"position":5},"title":"Future Blues (Willie Brown\/Son House)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 17, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"This is one of the defining Delta blues guitar pieces, apparently originated by Charlie Patton, though I got it from Willie Brown and Son House. Brown's version is the one that was titled \"Future Blues,\" and I first came across it in Stefan Grossman's Delta Blues Guitar instruction book. That\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Grossman-Delta-Blues-233x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5739"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5751,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5739\/revisions\/5751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}