THE 1000 BEST SONGS IN THE WORLD EVER.

64-George McCrae-Rock Your Baby,

1974-Number 1 single.

Best Bit-At 0.09. Do you ever think to yourself, I’m going to give myself a treat, and choose a song to listen to. Those are the songs which are for you ‘the best songs in the world ever.’ In my opinion if they have Disco’s in heaven, then surely this is the song they play.

‘Rock Your Baby’ which is also the title of George McCrae’s debut Album from 1974, was written by Harry Wayne Casey, and Richard Finch, (see also best songs 893 and 375) and was also produced by them as well. The song is considered to be groundbreaking as it is one of the first ‘Disco’ hits, and with worldwide sales in excess of 11 million copies it is the 27th best selling single of all time. The story goes that Casey and Finch were to audition McCrae’s wife Gwen for the song, but after she arrived late to the studio, they listened to George, and after hearing his impressive falsetto it was a done deal.

At that time Casey and Finch were just setting out together as a song writing team, working together as ‘KC and the Sunshine Band,’ for which they would go on to write a further five Billboard Number 1 singles. One of the session musicians on ‘Rock Your Baby’ was Jerome Smith, (1953-2000) who also worked on many of the KC and the Sunshine Band’s hits. He provided the guitar playing on the track for which he received $15, it is said that his style and sound was an inspiration for Nile Rogers of Chic (see also best songs 175-87 and 17.) The song was also an inspiration for Benny Andersson, and Bjorn Ulvaeus of ABBA, who have said that the backing track of ‘Dancing Queen,’ (see also best songs 44) was based on this song.

‘Rock Your Baby’ was also one of the first hit singles to use a drum machine, in this case it was the one which belonged to Timmy Thomas, (1944-2022) (see also best songs 498) Richard Finch has said,’His organ was left up in the studio, and ‘Rock Your Baby’ became born unto this crazy drum machine that was inside of this Lowry organ that he left there. I used to use that as a tempo map, and I would play along with the drum machine. In the beginning it would hide my errors, but it would also teach me to be a better drummer, because I was paying attention to it that closely. Then we would build on that. We had a 1-inch 8-track machine and I had a cheap Japanese bass. We were just recording and recording and recording, and one night, this one track came out like better than anything else. It was like God was in the building or something, we had been blessed. It was like the hunger and desire was so incredibly overwhelming that some magical moment happened in there. We knew to build on that track.

In 1992 ‘Rock Your Baby’ returned to the UK top 40 when the British ‘Dance’ act ‘KWS’ took their version to Number 8, it was released as the follow up to their UK Number 1 of the same year,’Please Don’t Go,’ which had also been written by Casey and Finch.

George Warren McCrae Jr. was born on October 19th, 1944, in West Palm Beach, Florida, United States, one of his his first ventures in to music was as a teenager when forming his own singing group the ‘Jivin’ Jets,’ before joining the United States Navy in 1963. Also in 1963 McCrae married Gwen (nee Mosley) and after leaving the navy in 1967 reformed the ‘Jivin’ Jets’ with Gwen. They soon decided to work as a duo, and when Gwen won her first solo contract, George became her manager. The discography of George McCrae includes 17 Albums released between 1974-2016, and 34 singles issued between 1974-2009. In America on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart two of those songs have reached the top 40, with ‘Rock Your Baby’ making Number 1, while in the UK, he has achieved seven top 40 singles, with this song also being his only chart topper.

‘Woman, take me in your arms Rock your baby. Woman, take me in your arms Rock your baby. There’s nothing to it, just say you wanna do it. Open up your heart, and let the loving start.’