"Little Ole Man (Uptight, Everything's Alright)" is a 1967 single recorded and released by comedian Bill Cosby, released as a single from the entertainer's first musical comedy album, Silver Throat: Bill Cosby Sings.
A comedic parody which Cosby narrated about "a little ole man" who he discovers twice, first getting hit by a train, and later being run over by elephants. The musical instrumental and accompanying background vocals were based on the Stevie Wonder classic, "Uptight (Everything's Alright)".
The single became an unexpected hit for Cosby charting as high as number four on the Billboard Hot 100 making Cosby one of the first comedians to have a charted hit single on the Billboard music charts. Fellow comics like Steve Martin and parody musician "Weird Al" Yankovic later followed him on the Billboard charts with their comedy records.
On the album 200 M.P.H., Cosby states that the song was dedicated to his grandfather.
Famous quotes containing the words ole and/or man:
“Go down, Moses
‘Way down in Egypt land,
Tell ole Pharaoh,
To let my people go.”
—Unknown. Go Down, Moses (l. 1–4)
“To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)