November, 1965.

The inner jukebox is having a laugh. I haven’t run anywhere for quite some time now, and certainly don’t intend on doing so for the foreseeable future. Heck, these days I’m lucky if I can manage a limpless walk!

This was originally written by Jamaican singer-songwriter Jackie Edwards, who was working for Island Records as a songwriter at the time. He recorded it for his 1965 album Come On Home but it wasn’t until later that same year that The Spencer Davis Group took the song to new heights.

At the time producer Chris Blackwell was trying to launch his Island label and received funding based on a large share of the label. The success of this one song meant that he was able to repay the money and cement the future of Island Records (which he sold in 1989 to PolyGram).

The song spent fourteen weeks on the UK charts, including a week at number one, but didn’t fare so well in the US. According to Spencer Davis himself, the radio stations in America at the time were split into black and white stations.

Initially the song fared well on the black music stations but that was because nobody had seen a picture of the band. When it turned out they were white, the song was suddenly dropped from the playlist and the momentum in the States was lost.