My 45’s: Kansas City by Wilbert Harrison

Very few singles from my days as ‘Funky Genghis’ survive, but some did – and still sound great today! This is the second in a series.

---

This is a great song and it’s almost hard to believe it was written in 1952 – an early hit by the great songwriting team Leiber & Stoller. Wilbert Harrison’s was the first version to became a US chart-topper, and was recorded for the Fury record label in 1959.

It was Albert King who first brought this song to my attention – on the outstanding every-track-is-f**king-amazing Born Under A Bad Sign in 1967 – one of the best blues/R&B albums of all time. But the Wilbert Harrison version is great R&B by anyone’s standards.

My copy is, sadly, not on the Fury label but a much later pressing on Collectables, licensed from Hi Records. But it is still the original mono recording. Other great artists on the Hi label include Al Green and Willie Mitchell; we’ll be hearing from them later…!

According to Roon there are 836 versions of this song – Little Richard, The Beatles, Peggy Lee & Quincy Jones, James Brown, Tom Jones and the excellent Graham Parker & The Rumour. It’s a very long list!