On January 16, 1988, George Harrison reached #1 with “Got My Mind Set On You,” the first single from his Cloud Nine album. Having done a bit of research in preparation for this post, I can say with confidence that I didn’t know much about “Got My Mind Set On You,” one of the last 45s I purchased all those years ago. The major revelation for me was that it’s actually a cover of a song originally recorded by James Ray in 1962.

Harrison purchased Ray’s self-titled LP while visiting his sister in the U.S. in 1963, before The Beatles’ official arrival on American shores the following year. 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. The song was Harrison’s final #1 hit, after 1970’s “My Sweet Lord” and 1973’s “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth), and marked the last time any of The Beatles reached the pinnacle of the Hot 100. But twenty-two 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:

I also didn’t know that the video for “Got My Mind Set On You” (the song’s second) was nominated for 3 MTV VMAs, though George Harrison went home empty-handed. I was, however, very much aware that following their successful studio partnership, 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.