Speaking from experience, I think this is a metaphor. I think they were days, not miles, and it wasn’t his feet that were hurting so bad.
This 1968 release was Edwin Starr’s first hit for Motown, reaching No. 6, after Berry Gordy bought the Ric-Tic label and all its artists’ contracts. He had a much bigger hit with “War” a couple of years later, but it was songs like this one, along with his Ric-Tic catalog, that made Starr a Northern Soul favorite — so much so that he relocated to England full-time in the early ’80s and lived there until his death in 2003.
The clip is from a syndicated TV show called “Upbeat,” which was produced out of Cleveland from 1966-71.
The song was basically a rewrite of an earlier R&B song called “32 Miles to Waycross,” later recorded by other artists, including Wilson Picket, as “Mojo Mama.” Waycross, Ga., is in the southeastern part of the state near the Okefenokee Swamp. It doesn’t look like the kind of place you’d willingly walk 32 miles to get to unless there was something powerfully good at the end of the journey, yet it unaccountably turns up in lots of song lyrics.
