#748: Don’t It Make You Want To Go Home by Joe South
Peak Month: October 1969
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #5
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #41
YouTube.com: “Don’t It Make You Want To Go Home”
Lyrics:”Don’t It Make You Want To Go Home”
Joseph Alfred Souter was born in 1940 in Atlanta, Georgia. At the age of eleven his father gave him a guitar. In his mid-teens he built a small radio station where he played his own songs to his listeners. In his teens he changed his surname from Souter to South. He began his career penning a novelty answer song in 1958. “The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor” was in response to two number one hits that year. The “Witch Doctor” had been a hit for David Seville and The Chipmunks, while “The Purple People Eater” was a hit for Sheb Wooley. South wrote the song for The Big Bopper, who had a hit earlier that year called “Chantilly Lace”. In the case of “Purple People Eater Meets The Witch Doctor” the Witch Doctor and the Purple People Eater find themselves forming a two piece rock n’roll band. The Witch Doctor plays guitar and the Purple People Eater plays horn. The lyrics build on the longing of the Purple People Eater who in Sheb Wooley’s song confides the reason he has come to earth is “I want to get a job in a rock n’ roll band.”