"Mustang Sally" is a R&B song written and first recorded by Mack Rice in 1965. It gained greater popularity when Wilson Pickett covered it the following year on a single, a version also released on his 1967 album, The Wicked Pickett. On "The Rascals Anthology" booklet, Felix Cavaliere claims that the Young Rascals actually recorded "Mustang Sally" and "Land of 1000 Dances" before Pickett. He says that Atlantic Records "copped those two songs from them and gave them to Pickett" to record. Pickett did both songs a little faster but the seeds came from the Rascals' versions.
According to music historian Tom Shannon the song started as a joke when singer Della Reese wanted a new Ford Mustang. Rice called the early version "Mustang Mama", but changed the title after Aretha Franklin suggested "Mustang Sally".
Rice's version made it to #15 on the U.S. R&B charts in 1965. Pickett's version climbed to #6 on the R&B charts and #23 on the Pop charts in 1966, #4 in Canada on the (RPM) charts, and #28 in the UK Singles Chart on its original release and #62, when it was re-released in 1987.
In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Wilson Pickett's recording of the song at #434 on a list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The song dropped seven spots to #441, when the magazine published its 2010 update of the list.
The Coasters released a version of the song, that can be found on their 1987 greatest hits album, 20 Greatest Hits.
The Young Rascals covered the song in 1966, changing the year of the "brand new Mustang" from 1965 to 1966.
The song featured prominently in the 1991 film The Commitments and appears on the film's soundtrack album, as sung by Andrew Strong. It was released as a single from the album and reached #63 in the UK Singles Chart.
The chorus of the song includes the lyrics "Ride Sally, Ride" -- a phrase, which became fodder for newspaper headlines in 1983, when astronaut Sally Ride became the first American woman in space.
Also, this song was performed: Andy Taylor, BB King and Eric Clapton, Blue Dots, Buddy Guy and Jeff Beck, Charles Wright, Funkhouse, Guitar Pete, Gerard Butler, Hovik Gulishian & Dynamic James, John Lee Hooker, JoJo, Julia Juice, Los Lobos, Sir Mack Rice, Modern Blues Band, Playalong For Saxophone, Revelations, Silver Apples, The Gadjits, The Kingsmen, Thomas Pedersen
Famous quotes containing the words mustang and/or sally:
“A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)
“In the quilts I had found good objects—hospitable, warm, with soft edges yet resistant, with boundaries yet suggesting a continuous safe expanse, a field that could be bundled, a bundle that could be unfurled, portable equipment, light, washable, long-lasting, colorful, versatile, functional and ornamental, private and universal, mine and thine.”
—Radka Donnell-Vogt, U.S. quiltmaker. As quoted in Lives and Works, by Lynn F. Miller and Sally S. Swenson (1981)