Song of the Day 9/18: Joe South, “Games People Play”

It’s hard to tell nowadays, but pop psychology wasn’t always with us. The book that brought it to the masses was published in 1964 by psychiatrist Eric Berne, who noticed that a lot of the interpersonal problems his patients described fit certain patterns. From that, he developed what he called transactional analysis.

Berne trained as a psychoanalyst, but in the 1950s he started to concentrate on how people interacted with each other rather than their underlying personalities. His theories were mostly ignored by the profession, until he self-published 3,000 copies of “Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships” in 1964. By the end of the next year it had gone through eight additional printings, and while psychoanalysts scorned it, the public gobbled it up. It hit the best-seller lists in 1966.

Singer and songwriter Joe South pounced on its popularity with this song, released in August 1968. Though its subject matter had little to do with Berne’s book, it had a similar slow build. It didn’t enter the charts until January 1969, eventually reaching No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 1970 it won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year.

What looks like an electric guitar in this German video is actually the distinctive-sounding Danelectro electric sitar.

Within four years there were six dozen covers recorded. Everyone from Mel Tormé to the Staple Singers to Trini Lopez gave it a go. Country musicians were particularly taken with the tune. Conway Twitty, Ernest Tubb, Dolly Parton and Waylon Jennings were just a few of the Nashville crowd who tackled it.

But the most successful cover came years later. The Inner Circle, the Jamaican reggae band best known for “Bad Boys,” used as the theme for the reality show “Cops,” released their version in 1994. Though it only reached No. 81 in the U. and No. 67 in the UK, it hit the Top 10 in several European countries.