What'd I Say

By Charles's own account in his autobiography, the song was an accident. At the end of a December 1958 show he and his band had played their entire set and still had about twelve minutes to fill, so he told the Raelettes to follow him. He began on a Wurlitzer electric piano, moved to a regular piano for four choruses over a Latin conga rhythm, and the song turned into a call and response with the Raelettes and the horns. The crowd reacted at once, and he called Jerry Wexler to say he had something to record.

Atlantic recorded it on 18 February 1959 in its small studio, with engineer Tom Dowd on the new eight-track machine, in a few takes and without overdubs. It ran over seven and a half minutes, so Dowd divided it into Part I and Part II, with a false ending between them. The band was Charles, David Newman, Bennie Crawford, Edgar Willis, Milt Turner and the Raelettes. Released in June 1959, it reached number 6 on the Hot 100 and number 1 on the R&B chart, and it was his first gold record. Many radio stations refused it for its suggestive nature.

Charles closed every concert with it for the rest of his career. In 1963 he told the New Musical Express that he really enjoyed singing it. The Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry in 2002. Rolling Stone placed it at number 10 on its 2003 list of the 500 greatest songs and number 80 in 2021.

Covers

Jerry Lee Lewis took it to number 30 in 1961, and Bobby Darin's version reached number 21 in Canada in 1962. Elvis Presley used it in the film Viva Las Vegas and put it on the B-side of the title song. Paul McCartney was struck by the song on first hearing, George Harrison remembered a 1959 party where it was played for eight hours, and the early Beatles played it at every show in Hamburg.