Robbed hit of the week 5/5/14 - Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart's "People Get Ready"...

Jeff Beck & Rod Stewart - "People Get Ready"
from the album Flash (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #48
Songwriter: Curtis Mayfield

This week's "robbed hit" is a remake of a soul classic done by two of rock music's giants, guitarist Jeff Beck and singer Rod Stewart. After toiling in a rockabilly group called the Rumbles, Beck got his big break when he joined the British Invasion rock band Yardbirds in 1965 after the departure of Eric Clapton, while sharing guitar duties to a young Jimmy Page (now you can see how vital the Yardbirds were for rock music). However after a tumultuous few years Beck was kicked out, and formed The Jeff Beck Group, releasing his debut single "Hi-Ho Silver Lining" in 1967, which reached #14 on the British singles chart while "bubbling" under the American Hot 100 at #123. Two years later, his band would join flower-pop singer Donovan on "Goo Goo Barabajagal (Love Is Hot)", which made Jeff's first top-40 American hit outside the Yardbirds. Meanwhile, in those two years Beck's group released two album which made the top-20 on the American albums chart, Truth and Beck-ola, which featured a then-upcoming raspy singer named Rod Stewart. Rod would leave the group after that, and while Beck would continue to sell albums, his individual songs wouldn't reach pop radio in either England or the States.

Rod and Jeff reunited for the former's Camouflage album, which sent the single "Infatuation" featuring his distinctive guitar work to the top-10 on the US pop chart in 1984. To return the favor, Rod sang lead on a track on Beck's 1985 album Flash. It was a cover of a song written by the gospel/soul icon Curtis Mayfield for his group the Impressions in 1965, "People Get Ready". A true hymn in the African-American emancipation tradition, the original single went to #14 on the Hot 100 that year and top-3 on the soul chart...

Jeff and Rod showed true reverence to the song when they recorded it (in contrast to the rest of the pop-oriented Flash record)...

While the pair's version did very well on rock stations, peaking at #5 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart, the single stalled just above the halfway mark on both the American and British pop chart. Beck's followup from the album, "Gets Us All In The End" (with Jimmy Hall of Wet Willie on vocals), went to #20 on the rock chart. His most recent appearance was in 1994 with a cover of fellow guitar god Jimi Hendrix's "Manic Depression" featuring Seal.

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Jeff and Rod would occasionally perform live...

Here's Jeff playing "People Get Ready" at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame...

...and again at the Hall with Sting for its 25th anniversary...

and again with Joss Stone in 2007...

The most well-known version of the classic possibly is the interpolation of the song in Bob Marley & The Wailers "One Love/People Get Ready", which was originally released on their 1977 album Exodus but reach the top-5 on the British singles chart in 1984...