Joe South

Joe South, born Joe Souter, launched his professional life as a country performer by appearing on an Atlanta radio broadcast and enlisting with Pete Drake’s group during 1957. One year later he cut the novelty single “The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor” and established himself as a session player in Nashville and at Muscle Shoals. His contributions can be heard on releases by Marty Robbins, Eddy Arnold, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, and Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sounds of Silence.” Throughout the 1960s he turned increasing attention to songwriting, supplying Deep Purple with “Hush” and furnishing Billy Joe Royal several successes, among them “Down in the Boondocks.”

South began committing his own songs to tape in 1968 and scored an immediate success the next year when the Grammy-winning “Games People Play” captured Song of the Year honors. Additional self-produced hits followed—“Don’t It Make You Want to Go Home” and “Walk a Mile in My Shoes”—while Lynn Anderson delivered a major country-and-pop crossover smash in 1971 with South’s composition “(I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden.”

After his brother’s suicide in 1971, South withdrew for several years, relocating to Maui and residing in the island’s jungles. Already regarded as a difficult personality—he had recorded the track “I’m a Star,” faced a drug arrest, and maintained an uneasy relationship with live performance—he once urged concertgoers to dance through the hall and kiss his ass upon reaching the stage. He resurfaced briefly in 1975 with the album Midnight Rainbows yet soon stepped away from recording and touring altogether.

A 1994 London showcase celebrating American Southern artists marked his return to the stage, after which he resumed activity in music publishing. South suffered a fatal heart attack at his Georgia residence in September 2012 at the age of seventy-two.