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Joe South, Of 'Games People Play' Fame, Dies

Joe South, in 2009.
Rick Diamond
/
Getty Images
Joe South, in 2009.
A clip of Joe South, singing 'Games People Play'

Joe South, who wrote such '60s and '70s hits as Games People Play and (I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden, died Wednesday of an apparent heart attack at his home in Buford, Ga. He was 72.

South had quite a career, as the bio on his website shows. He was a session guitarist on such seminal albums as Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde and Simon and Garfunkel's The Sounds of Silence. Then there was his solo success with Games People Play and the big hit that Lynn Anderson had with Rose Garden.

What really surprised us, though, is that he also wrote Deep Purple's first hit: Hush. For those of you who only know that band for Smoke on the Water, we recommend you check out Hush. It's among VH1's "100 greatest" hard rock tunes.

A clip from Deep Purple doing 'Hush'

(H/T to NPR's Jean Cochran.)

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott
Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.