I Got a Woman

Charles heard the Southern Tones' It Must Be Jesus on the radio while on the road in the summer of 1954. He and his trumpeter Renald Richard wrote a song with a frenetic gospel pace and secular lyrics over a jazz-inspired rhythm and blues background, with a bridge inspired by Big Bill Broonzy's Living on Easy Street. He said he performed it for about a year before recording it, on 18 November 1954 in the Atlanta studios of Georgia Tech's radio station WGST. Atlantic issued it as a single in December 1954 with Come Back Baby on the other side, and both later appeared on the album Ray Charles. It is described as one of the prototypes of soul music, which took shape after What'd I Say.

The 1954 recording entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1990, and Rolling Stone ranked it number 239 among the 500 greatest songs. A re-recording called I Gotta Woman reached number 79 on the Hot 100 in 1965.

Covers

Elvis Presley recorded it on 10 January 1956 at RCA's Nashville studio and kept it in his shows for years. The Beatles recorded two versions for BBC radio, in July 1963 and March 1964. Kanye West's Gold Digger, from 2005, samples it, and Jamie Foxx, who played Charles in the film Ray, sings an interpolation as its introduction.