On January 15, 1988, George Harrison reached #1 with “Got My Mind Set On You,” the first single from his Cloud Nine album. Forever memorable to me as one of the last Top 40 singles I purchased on vinyl all those years ago, I can’t say I aware at the time that “Got My Mind Set On You” is actually a cover of a song originally recorded by American R&B singer James Ray.

Harrison had purchased Ray’s self-titled LP in 1963 while visiting his sister in the U.S., a year before The Beatles’ official arrival on American shores. In an interview published in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits, Harrison described the album as “really terrible, but the best three songs were written by this guy who discovered James Ray, a former mailman named Rudy Clark.”

One of those tunes, “Got My Mind Set On You,” was split into two parts on the album. “If you listen to the song now it’s very different from how I’ve done it. I’ve updated it and changed the chords, because I preferred it the way I heard it in my head,” Harrison explained. “Clark and Ray’s version of it was coming out of the old jazz/swing era, and it has these horrible screechy women’s voices singing those backup parts.”

With the help of producer Jeff Lynne, formerly of Electric Light Orchestra and an unabashed Beatles fan, Harrison polished “Got My Mind Set On You” into a brassy delight. Reaching the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 on January 15, 1988, “Got My Mind Set On You” was Harrison’s final #1 hit, after 1970’s “My Sweet Lord” and 1973’s “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth). It also marked the last time any of The Beatles claimed the chart’s crown.

Twenty-five years on, the catchy “Got My Mind Set On You” still occasionally resurfaces from the deep recesses of my brain, remaining lodged there for days. Hear here:

The music video above was actually the second made for “Got My Mind Set On You” (here’s the first) and would later be nominated for 3 MTV Video Music Awards though George Harrison went home empty-handed. Following their successful studio pairing, Harrison and Lynne went on to form The Traveling Wilburys, a supergroup featuring Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, and Bob Dylan.

Purchase George Harrison – “Got My Mind Set On You” via iTunes, Amazon MP3.

[NOTE: This post originally appeared in altered form on January 15, 2010.]