Hoyt Wayne Axton (March 25, 1938 – October 26, 1999) was an American country music singer-songwriter, and a film and television actor. He became prominent in the early 1960s, establishing himself as a well-known folk singer on the West Coast with an earthy style and powerful voice. As he matured, many of his songwriting efforts became well known throughout the world. Among them are "Joy to the World," (which many know for its opening lyric "Jeremiah was a Bullfrog!") and "Greenback Dollar."
He was born in Duncan, Oklahoma and spent his pre-teen years in Comanche, Oklahoma with his brother, John. His mother, Mae Boren Axton, co-wrote the classic rock 'n' roll song "Heartbreak Hotel", which became the first major hit for Elvis Presley. Some of Hoyt's own songs were also later recorded by Elvis. Hoyt's father, John T. Axton, was a Navy officer stationed in Jacksonville, Florida; the family joined him there in 1949. Axton graduated from Robert E. Lee High School in 1956 and left town after Knauer’s Hardware burned down on graduation night, a prank gone wrong.[1] Axton attended Oklahoma State for a short length of time before following his father and enlisting in the Navy. Hoyt served aboard the USS Princeton (LPH-5), before pursuing a music career.
After his discharge from the Navy on the west coast, he began singing folk songs in San Francisco nightclubs. In the early 1960s he released his first folk album titled The Balladeer (recorded at the legendary Troubadour), which included his song Greenback Dollar, a 1963 hit for The Kingston Trio. Axton released numerous albums well into the 1980s, changing somewhat with the times but always retaining an honest, down-home and fairly "country" approach to his music. Axton had many minor singing hits of his own, such as "Boney Fingers" ("Work your fingers to the bone, what do you get? Boney fingers, boney fingers"), "When the Morning Comes", and 1979's "Della and the Dealer as well as Jealous Man" (which he sang in a guest appearance on WKRP in Cincinnati). His vocal style featured his distinctive baritone (which later deepened to near-bass) and use of characterization: at times gritty and defiant, other times exceptionally mellow, occasionally deliberately cartoonish. One song, "Officer Ray," is styled in self-parody, as Hoyt softly croons curses at a sadistic police officer that would seem more likely to come from the narrator of "The Pusher": "Officer Ray / .... / May you have a bad day / May your wife run away/ With a hippie."
