(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher

"(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher" was credited on Wilson's single to Gary Jackson, Raynard Miner and Carl Smith. Billy Davis helped secure the publishing and was at first credited, then had his credit removed while keeping a significant share of publishing income, and the Rita Coolidge credit of 1977 adds him. Chess in-house writers Smith and Miner wrote it, the Dells recorded it but it went unreleased in the form they cut, and Gary Jackson revised it and pitched it to Carl Davis at Brunswick; the Dells' version appears on There Is (Cadet). It was recorded on July 6, 1967 at Columbia Studios in Chicago, produced by Carl Davis and arranged by Sonny Sanders. The players were Funk Brothers moonlighting from Motown, James Jamerson on bass, Richard Pistol Allen on drums, Robert White on guitar and Johnny Griffith on keyboards, with Maurice White on drums, Mike Terry on baritone sax and the Andantes Jackie Hicks and Marlene Barrow; Carl Davis said they would load up in the van and come over to Chicago, and I would pay them double scale. Wilson first sang it as a soul ballad, Davis advised a more energetic, jumpy approach, and the lead vocal was one take.

Released in August 1967 as Brunswick 55336 with "I'm the One to Do It" on the B-side, it reached number six on the Hot 100 and number one on the R&B chart, number 11 in the UK on its 1969 reissue and 15 on the 1987 reissue, and is certified gold in the UK; it was his last number one R&B hit and his sixth and last top-ten pop single. It entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999 and was ranked 246th or 248th in Rolling Stone's 2010 list of 500 songs. Rita Coolidge's version (A&M, March 1977, producer David Anderle) reached number two on the Hot 100, and Jimmy Barnes covered it in 1991 and Peter Tork in 1994. It is heard in Ghostbusters II (1989), The Bachelor (1999) and Stranger Things, and an instrumental was played for Joe Biden at the 2012 and 2016 conventions. Setlist.fm lists three performances among 483 Jackie Wilson setlists. Which release our upload is has not been established.