Singer Billy Joe Royal returns to the Strand in Marietta

This year will be a special but bittersweet farewell concert. At 68, Royal has decided to retire the tour bus after decades on the road.

“It’s going to be kind of emotional,” Royal said. “But I figured, I started here, I’ll end here.”

After more than 20 years in Nashville, and stints in Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Los Angeles before that, Royal now lives in coastal North Carolina, to be near his teenage daughter.

Recently, he called on his way to Pigeon Forge, Tenn., where he was driving to a meet a movie director to discuss a part in an upcoming western.

Royal, who admitted he’d always been afraid to fly, laughed as he described the unlikely nine-hour journey.

“My agent told me they wanted me because I look good riding a horse,” Royal said. “One thing I can do is ride a horse. I can sing and ride a horse, and that’s about it.”

Born in Valdosta in 1942, Royal began singing at a young age, first appearing with his uncles’ country-western band.

“They had a radio show in Valdosta and they let me sing,” Royal recalled. “And for some reason, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. I just wanted to be in music. Luckily, I got a chance to do it.”

Royal’s family moved to Marietta when he was in grade school, and as a teenager he joined the Georgia Jubilee musical revue in East Point, which included Ray Stevens and Jerry Reed.

In the late ’50s, Royal was making $75 a week singing at the Anchorage Club in the Clermont Hotel in Atlanta, when he was offered a job at the Bamboo Ranch in Savannah. He spent two years there, working six days a week and playing five sets a night, with his friend, songwriter, producer and guitarist, Joe South.

Royal and South roomed together and performed with rock and roll, rhythm and blues and country stars, including the likes of Fats Domino, B.B. King, the Drifters, Chuck Berry, Roy Orbison and George Jones.

That’s also when Royal and South began cutting demos and low-budget singles and honing their hybrid rock-country-soul sound.

“I got to meet these people and learn from them,” Royal said. “Sam Cooke was so nice to me. He was my idol. The second time he was there he put his arm around me and said, ‘You just keep getting better and better.’ For a kid, I can’t tell you how that felt.”

Like so many other young singers from the South, Royal’s first hero was Elvis Presley.

“I loved Elvis,” Royal said. “He was our inspiration — a Southern boy from humble beginnings. So if he could do it, maybe we could do it.”

Royal’s working class Valdosta roots show up in his first and biggest hit, “Down in the Boondocks,” which peaked at number nine on the Top 40 chart in 1965. Written and produced by South, it was the star-crossed love story of a poor boy and a rich girl.

Royal’s lilting tenor gave the song a determined sort of innocence, as he sang, “One fine day I’ll find a way to move from this old shack. I’ll hold my head up like a king and I never, never will look back.” And “Down in the Boondocks” suddenly gave Royal a measure of fame and fortune.

“After Boondocks hit, I got a call to tour with Dick Clark’s Cavalcade of Stars,” Royal said. “We did a show every night for three months with stars like Tom Jones, Herman’s Hermits, Jackie DeShannon and Neil Diamond. I was touring with all these people that I’d heard on the radio and we were becoming friends. That’s how my life changed.”

In 1970, Royal was working long stretch at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, when he finally met Presley.

“I went down to see his show and he introduced me in the crowd and I spent some time with him in his dressing room,” Royal remembered. “The guy was just unbelievable to me. And later on I worked with him in Lake Tahoe. Elvis played the main showroom and I headlined the lounge. I saw him every night for about a month.”

Throughout the ’70s, Royal lived in Los Angeles. But by 1980, “Things weren’t going well,” Royal said.

“I was going through hell. I was going through a divorce. But Kenny Rogers lived down the street from me. And Kenny was tearing the world up singing country music. So was B.J. Thomas. Those guys were my age, so I thought, ‘maybe there’s a shot for me.’ ”

Royal decided to move back to Georgia, and eventually wound up in Nashville. He signed a deal with Atlantic Records, had his first a big country hit in 1985 with “Burned Like A Rocket,” and his next three records hit the Top 10 on the country charts.

Last year, Royal released his first gospel album, “Hard Rock to Roll.” It went to number three on the country Christian charts, and recently he’s been in Nashville working on a follow-up.

Mostly, though, he considers himself retired. Reflecting on decades of touring and performing, Royal comes back to the place he started, and the friendships that began at Marietta High — including brothers Carroll Raines, who helped get him that first gig at the Strand, and Rupert Raines, who arranged the recent New Year’s Eve shows.

“You know what it was the like? It was ‘Happy Days,’ ” Royal said. “Carroll was the Fonz. I guess I was Richie Cunningham. That’s what our life was like.

“We had Varner’s Drive-In and the movie theatre. Everybody knew everybody and everybody liked everybody. It was the greatest place to grow up in the world. All we ever did was laugh.”

New Year’s Eve With Billy Joe Royal, 8 p.m. Dec. 31. $35. Earl Smith Strand Theatre,117 N. Park Square, Marietta, 770-293-0080, earlsmithstrand.org