“Mr Bojangles” — Sammy Davis Jr

The old Sammy Davis Jr song, “Mr Bojangles”, has been going around in my head the past few days.

For many years I thought this was an extremely old song…perhaps something from the 1920s or 1930s… but it turns out it was only written in the late 1960s by a country artist, Jerry Jeff Walker.

Now, I may not have been completely off-base imagining the song was much older than that.

There is a much earlier song from the 1930s called “Bojangles of Harlem” about a famous song-and-dance man of the time called Bill “Bojangles” Robinson.

That very different song was recorded by Fred Astaire (you can have a listen here…you’ll just have to imagine Fred Astaire tap dancing in the background, I’m afraid… https://youtu.be/1DxlYgAqjmw ).

Fred Astaire was a great admirer of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and performed another tribute to Bojangles in his 1936 film “Swing Time”.

As a kid I watched a lot of black and while Fred Astaire movies with my grandad on a Saturday afternoon…they were usually on when the sports programmes were on the other main channels, and I was never a sporty person…so I may well have picked up something about the original Bojangles from one of those old Saturday afternoon films.

However, Jerry Jeff Walker has said “Mr Bojangles” was not about the original song-and-dance man Fred Astaire idolised. Rather, it was about an old man he met during a night in the police cells after he’d been arrested for…