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by Bob Stanley

The British version sounds like a half-finished demo in comparison...

Bob Stanley on their hit 'Keep On Runnin'

Something that drives me nuts is when I hear the wrong version of a hit single on the radio - by wrong, I mean any version that wasn't the one people bought in Woolworths, on a 45, at the time. For instance, when most radio stations play the Four Tops' Walk Away Renee we hear a version with great clanging piano chords that were barely audible on the 1967 Tamla Motown single - presumably the wrong mix was used on a 'Best Of' at some point in the intervening 48 years and there hasn't been a needling pedant like me at the radio station (or record label) to point it out. Naturally, Phil 'The Collector' Swern would never allow any such gaffe on SOTS.

Gimme Some Lovin' was a huge transatlantic hit - their first in the States, where even the mighty Keep On Runnin' had failed to chart. It reached no.2 in Britain at the end of 1966 and then no.7 in America at the start of 1967. The two singles were markedly different though, and it's the American hit that you're more likely to hear on British radio these days, with its wailing backing vocals and propellant percussion; the British version sounds like a half-finished demo in comparison, but was obviously still powerful enough for the British public to push it almost all the way up the chart - only the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations kept it from being the band's third number one.

Two number ones (Keep On Runnin' and the less fondly remembered Somebody Help Me, both in 1966) was already an impressive haul for the Birmingham band who originally had the rather dull name The Rhythm & Blues Quartette. They changed it in 1964 when bassist Muff Winwood pointed out that guitarist Spencer Davis was the only one who enjoyed doing interviews - the logic was that they could all stay in bed or slope off to the pub and the press wouldn't mind as long as the main man, Spencer Davis himself, was present.

was covered by a Philadelphia band called the Jordan Brothers before the Spencer Davis version was issued in America, and was a regional hit. It was then recorded by the Blues Brothers and, as a highlight of the 1980 movie, was a Top 20 hit in the States. More recently it made an appearance in Richard Curtis's film about Radio Caroline, The Boat That Rocked. Maybe eagle-eared Avids will remember if it was the British or American version.