Bobby Goldsboro was born in 1941 in Marianna, Florida. His family moved to Dothan, Alabama when he was a teenager, where his family lived after that. His interest in music started when he was just twelve years old.

He visited a friend’s house one day and that friend had received a ukulele as a gift, but the friend didn’t know how to play it. Bobby picked it up and started playing it right from the beginning. He didn’t even need any lessons. It just came natural to him. He got so good at the ukulele that his parents bought him a guitar and his career was off and running.

When he graduated from high school, he enrolled at Auburn University where he stayed for two years. Then he decided that music was to be his career and so, dropped out of college (to the dismay of his parents) to play guitar. He played for Roy Orbison from 1962 until 1964 when he embarked on a solo singing career. He hit the charts in 1964 with “See the Funny Little Clown” which he wrote. That song peaked at number nine on the pop charts. He continued to write and record hitting the charts consistently until 1968. Up until then he had written all of his own work.

In 1968, he met Bobby Russell who had written a song called “Honey.” (Sometimes called “Honey (I Miss You)).” It’s kind of a sad song, but Bobby Goldsboro was attracted to the song right from the beginning. It had first been recorded by Bob Shane who was a founding member of the Kingston Trio, but that version had not done much. So, they changed the arrangement a little and Bobby Goldsboro recorded the song. They recorded the song in one take. It was really good right from the start. But, they were nervous that maybe a mistake had been made, so they did a second take. It sounded exactly like the first take, but it’s the second that actually got released.

“Honey” is about the loss of a loved one. Bobby Russell got the idea when he looked out the window in his living room and noticed a tree growing in his front yard. He realized how much it had grown over the years and he decided to include the tree in the song.

“Honey” turned Bobby Goldsboro into a major star. He was invited to be a guest on numerous television shows, including The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He stayed popular until 1972 when he got his own show on television, The Bobby Goldsboro Show which ran from 1972 until 1975. There were 78 thirty minute episodes filmed.

Bobby has been involved in something or other related to performing all of his life. He wrote a children’s television series in 1995 and today, he is an accomplished oil painter having shown his work in several galleries.

In a bit of interesting (although maybe morbid) trivia, “Honey” started it’s Top 10 run the week that Martin Luther King was assassinated. It stayed in the Top 10 until the week that Robert Kennedy was killed, when it dropped out. No other song on the Billboard charts had a Top 10 run that spanned that time interval.

Today, Bobby Goldsboro is 77 years old. “Honey” first debuted on the pop charts on March 23, 1968 and three weeks later, it was number one. It stayed at number one for five weeks. It was Bobby Goldsboro’s only number one song.