SUPER HOLLYWOOD: Bobby Goldsboro

Bobby Goldsboro

Bobby Goldsboro (born January 18, 1941) is an American country and pop singer-songwriter. He had a string of pop and country hits in the 1960s and 1970s, including his signature #1 hit "Honey," which sold over one million copies in the United States.Goldsboro was born in Marianna, Florida. In 1941, Goldsboro's family moved 35 miles north from Marianna to Dothan, Alabama. He graduated from Dothan High School in 1959 and later enrolled at Auburn University. Goldsboro left college after his second year to pursue a musical career. He played guitar for Roy Orbison from 1962 to 1964 while releasing a few unsuccessful singles.
Goldsboro's solo career picked up steam with the top ten hit "See the Funny Little Clown." The single, written by Goldsboro, reached #9 on the U.S. national charts in early 1964. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. It was to be the first of a string of similar awards. Goldsboro would go on to have 11 Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and 12 on the country chart. In 1966 he recorded "Too Many People" with "It's Too Late" on the B-side. Although Goldsboro was not a prolific performer of dance music, both of these songs were popular within Northern soul and were played at Wigan Casino.His biggest hit was 1968's "Honey," a maudlin tearjerker about the death of a man's young wife. The song, written by Bobby Russell, was recorded in one take. It topped the Hot 100 for five weeks, reached #2 in the UK Singles Chart on two separate occasions (1968 and 1975), and was a #1 single in Australia, selling in excess of one million copies there. It also became his first country hit and marked a career transition, as his songs became more successful on the country chart than on the pop side. Bobby remained a fixture in the country top 40 into the early 1980s.
From 1973 to 1975, Goldsboro hosted the syndicated television variety series The Bobby Goldsboro Show.
One of Goldsboro's compositions, "With Pen in Hand," was recorded by several artists, including a Grammy-nominated pop version by Vikki Carr that reached the "Top 40," in 1969; Johnny Darrell had taken the song to #3 on the US country chart a year earlier. Goldsboro's "The Cowboy and The Lady" became a "Top 10" country hit as "The Cowgirl and The Dandy" for Brenda Lee in 1980; Dolly Parton had also covered it in 1977, and John Denver had a hit with the song in 1981.