[Alfred]

I looked up the history of the song too. I thought it was about Bill Robinson, but it turns out that Jerry Jeff Walker met the man the song is about in a jail long after Bill Robinson had passed. It was a white man (I guess even jail was segregated then too) who was a drunk that would only give his name as Bo Jangles. the author would only have been 7 when the real Bojangles died of heart disease.

That being said Bill Robinson’s life is a good subject for study. Seems to have been a solid Dude and an early civil rights protagonist when it was dangerous to be so. He was the highest paid black man in the U.S. making about $3500/week at his best.