What is the song Mr.Bojangles about?

Question

What is the song Mr.Bojangles about?

Answer 1

The song is about the dancing Mr. Bojangles who I also think was in the Little Colonel.

I believe the song is more about a generation for "down and out" people also originally know as the beats. These were the guys who the later beat took inspiration from.

Mr Bojangles is first a street dancer in New Orleans. You can still see these old guys today dancing for change in the French Quarter. The man looked to be the very eyes of age, and those are the windows to the soul.

Again, I believe the song is about a generation who went through the Great Depression and were just completely exhausted in every sense of the word, just beaten, and had accepted this fate with a smile and a tear as there was nothing else one could do in that state.

I like Kerouac but I don't think he really captured that very special generation well. Dylan was a contemporary of Kerouac and Ginsberg who both wrote about the social trends that proceeded them in hope of trying to come up with a solution or explanation for their own lot in life. I believe this is what this song was about whether sung by Sammy Davis Jr. or Bob Dylan.

Answer 2

It was about an obscure alcoholic but talented tap-dancing drifter, (not the famous stage and movie dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, as usually assumed). Bojangles is thought to have been a folk character who entertained informally in the south of the US and California, and some say he might have been one of the most gifted natural dancers ever. His actual name is not recorded, but he too, was a living part of what we celebrate in the American folk name, "Bojangles". Authentic reports of him exist from the 1920s through about 1965.

According to the original lyrics by Jerry Jeff Walker, he met Bojangles in a prison cell in New Orleans (the first precinct jail to be exact). The two began to converse about life in the philosophical way two men on the skids often do. Bojangles began to dance as Walker admired his skill.

Artists as diverse as Nina Simone, Harry Belafonte, Bob Dylan, Philip Glass, Tom T. Hall, Robbie Williams, Sammy Davis Jr., and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band have covered the song.

Answer 3

Who sings it, I think there might be more then one, an old "rock" and I believe country music had one. I could be wrong about that. The country one talks about an old homeless guy and somewhere in the song it talks about him jumping so high and him playing music. On the rock one I may be thinking about Mr.Tambourine man and that refers to drugs. I hope this helps

Answer 4

It was about an obscure alcoholic but talented tap-dancing drifter, (not the famous stage and movie dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, as usually assumed).

Read more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Bojangles_%28song%29

Answer 5

It's about an old man, whom the singer meets while in jail. He had a dog that was his friend and he died and he still grieves after 20 years...anyway the old man dances...he's happy even though he doesn't really have anything or anybody. And he dances and makes other people happy. Well, that's what I get out of it.

Answer 6

Bojamgles was a black tap dancer in the 20's and 30's who was very good. See the Shirley Temple movie the "Littelest Rebel", she tap danced on the stairs with him.

Answer 7

a black dancer from the 40s (?) named Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. Used to play 2nd fiddle to Shirley Temple in the movies before she became a Black & an ambassador.

Answer 8

An old blues man and his dog. I cannot listen to this song because his dog dies and he's still grieving.

Answer 9

I knew a man Bojangles and he danced for you

in worn out shoes.
With silver hair
a ragged shirt and baggy pants

the old soft shoe.
He jumped so high
jumped so high

then he lightly touched down.

Mister Bojangles
Mister Bojangles

Mister bojangles come back and dance.

I met him in a cell in New Orleans

I was down and out.
he looked at me to be the very eyes of age

as he spoke right out.
He talked of life
talked of life

he laughed slapped his leg a step.

Mister Bojangles
Mister Bojangles

Mister bojangles come back and dance.

He said his name
Bojangles

then he danced a lick across the cell.
He grabbed his pants a better stance
oh he jumped up high.
He clicked his heels.
He let go a laugh
let go a laugh.
Shook back his clothes all around.

Mister Bojangles
Mister Bojangles

Mister bojangles come back and dance.

Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949) was a pioneer and pre-eminent African-American tap dance performer.





Childhood and early career
Born in Richmond, Virginia on May 25, 1878, to Maxwell Robinson, a machine-shop worker, and Maria Robinson, a choir singer, Bill Robinson was brought up by his grandmother after the death of his parents when he was still a baby. He was christened Luther, a name he did not like, so he suggested to his younger brother Bill that they should exchange names. When Bill objected, Luther applied his fists, and the exchange was made! (The new 'Luther' later adopted the name Percy and became a well-known drummer.) The details of Robinson's early life are known only through legend, much of it perpetuated by Bill Robinson himself.

At the age of six he began dancing for a living, appearing as a "hoofer," or song-and-dance man, in local beer gardens. Two years later, in Washington, DC he toured with Mayme Remington's troupe. In 1891 (Ed: another source-1892), at the ripe age of 12, he joined a traveling company in "The South Before the War", and in 1905 (Ed: another source 1902) worked with George Cooper as a vaudeville team. He gained great success as a nightclub and musical comedy performer, and during the next 25 years became one of the toasts of Broadway. Not until he was fifty did he dance for white audiences, having devoted his early career exclusively to appearances on the black theater circuit.

In 1908 in Chicago he met Marty Forkins, who became his lifelong manager. Under Forkins' tutelage Robinson matured and began working as a solo act in nightclubs, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3500 per week. The publicity that gradually came to surround him included the creation of his famous "stair dance" (which he claimed to have invented on the spur of the moment when he was receiving some honor--he could never remember exactly what-- from the King of England. The King was standing at the top of a flight of stairs, and Bojangles' feet just danced up to be honored), his successful gambling exploits, his prodigious charity, his ability to run backward (he set a world's record of 8.2 seconds for the 75-yard backward dash) and to consume ice-cream by the quart, his argot--most notably the neologism "copacetic"--and such stunts as dancing down Broadway in 1939 from Columbus Circle to 44th St. in celebration of his 61st birthday.

Because his public image became preeminent, little is known of his first marriage to Fannie S. Clay in Chicago shortly after World War I, his divorce in 1943, or his marriage to Elaine Plaines on January 27, 1944, in Columbus, Ohio.

Toward the end of the vaudeville era a white impresario, Lew Leslie, produced "Blackbirds of 1928," a black revue for white audiences featuring Robinson and other black stars. From then on his public role was that of a dapper, smiling, plaid-suited ambassador to the white world, maintaining a tenuous connection with the black show-business circles through his continuing patronage of the Hoofer's Club, an entertainer's haven in Harlem. Consequently, blacks and whites developed differing opinions of him. To whites, for example, his nickname "Bojangles" meant happy-go-lucky, while the black variety artist Tom Flatcher claimed it was slang for "squabbler." Political figures and celebrities appointed him an honorary mayor of Harlem, a lifetime member of policemen's associations and fraternal orders, and a mascot of the New York Giants baseball team. Robinson reciprocated with open handed generosity and frequently credited the white dancer James Barton for his contribution to Robinson's dancing style.

After 1930 black revues waned in popularity, but Robinson remained in vogue with white audiences for more than a decade in some fourteen motion pictures produced by such companies as RKO, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. Most of them had musical settings, in which he played old-fashioned roles in nostalgic romances. His most frequent role was that of an antebellum butler opposite Shirley Temple or Will Rogers in such films as "The Littlest Colonel," "The Littlest Rebel" and "In Old Kentucky" (all released in 1935.) Rarely did he depart from the stereotype imposed by Hollywood writers. In a small vignette in "Hooray For Love" (1935) he played a mayor of Harlem modeled after his own ceremonial honors; in "One Mile From Heaven" (1937), he played a romantic lead opposite the singer Lena Horne after Hollywood had relaxed its taboo against such roles for blacks. Audiences enjoyed his style, which eschewed the frenetic manner of the jitterbug. In contrast, Robinson always remained cool and reserved, rarely using his upper body and depending on his busy, inventive feet and his expressive face. He appeared in one film for black audiences, "Harlem Is Heaven" (1931), a financial failure that turned him away from independent production.

In 1939 he returned to the stage in The Hot Mikado (1939 production), a jazz version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta produced at the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair, and was one of the greatest hits of the fair. His next performance, in "All in Fun" (1940), failed to attract audiences. His last theatrical project was to have been "Two Gentlemen From The South" with James Barton, in which the black and white roles reverse and eventually come together as equals, but the show did not open. Thereafter he confined himself to occasional performances, but he could still dance in his late sixties almost as well as he ever could, to the continual astonishment of his millions of admirers. He explained this extraordinary versatility--he once danced for more than an hour before a dancing class without repeating a step--by insisting that his feet responded directly to the music, his head having nothing to do with it.

Robinson died of a chronic heart condition at Columbia Presbyterian Center in New York City in 1949. His body lay in state at an armory in Harlem; schools were closed, thousands lined the streets waiting for a glimpse of his bier, and he was eulogized by politicians, black and white--perhaps more lavishly than any other African American of his time. "To his own people", wrote Marshall and Jean Stearns, "Robinson became a modern John Henry, who instead of driving steel, laid down iron taps." He was buried in the cemetery of the Evergreens in New York City.