1971 Bobby Goldsboro – Watching Scotty Grow

1971 Bobby Goldsboro – Watching Scotty Grow

Bobby Goldsboro was born in a small town near the Florida Panhandle. His family moved to Alabama when he was still in high school. He attended Auburn for a brief time before dropping out to pursue a career in music. That career had a great start in the early sixties when Bobby started playing guitar in Roy Orbison’s band.

Bobby began writing and singing his own songs and released singles on five different record labels in 1962 and 1963 before starting a long-term relationship with United Artists Records. His first record to chart higher than #70 on the Hot 100 was released in late 1963. Bobby wrote See The Funny Little Clown, and the record peaked at #9 on the Hot 100 in early 1964. It was the first of five singles that Bobby released that sold over a million copies.

Five more top forty singles (and a stack of records that didn’t chart that high) followed over the next five years. Bobby’s most successful single came out in 1968 when Bobby topped both the Hot 100 and the Adult Contemporary (AC) chart with Honey, a song written by Bobby Russell. Bobby co-produced the recording with Bob Shane from the Kingston Trio. Honey also topped the US Country chart and from that point on, Bobby’s records often did even better on the Country chart than they did on the pop chart.

In 1970, Bobby met with Mac Davis to listen to some songs Mac had written. Bobby really liked Watching Scotty Grow and recorded it for his next album. United Artists didn’t see any potential sales for a single that focused on the love a father had for his son and refused to release the song as a single. The song landed on Bobby’s next album, and when disk jockeys began playing the song off of the album, the company relented and released the single. To almost everybody’s surprise, the record did really well: it peaked at #11 on the Hot 100 in late 1970, #7 on the Country chart, and even reached the top of the AC chart.

The album got a new cover with a picture of Bobby and a young boy, and the company re-released the album with a new name: Watching Scotty Grow.

Bobby only reached the top forty one more time. In 1973, he co-wrote and recorded Summer (The First Time). The single peaked at #21 on the Hot 100 and #17 on the AC chart. He never again reached the top 100 on either chart.

Bobby began hosting his own television show on CBS in 1973. The Bobby Goldsboro Show aired 26 episodes a year for the next three years. Guest stars featured on the show were typically Easy Listening artists or Country artists.

From 1976 to 1981, Bobby had five more singles reach the Country top forty. He recorded an album of Christmas songs in 1986 and re-recorded many of his earlier hits on an album in 1987. He created the music for the Evening Shade television show and worked on several children’s shows.

He also released a live album in 2015 that featured performances from 2011.

Bobby has his home page on the web at https://www.bobbygoldsboro.com/home.cfm

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/bobby-goldsboro-mn0000075540/biography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Goldsboro
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Goldsboro_discography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watching_Scotty_Grow

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