“Hit the Road Jack” is a song written by the rhythm and blues singer Percy Mayfield and recorded by Ray Charles. Mayfield, who first recorded it in 1960 as an a cappella demo sent to music executive Art Rupe. It became famous after it was recorded by the singer-songwriter-pianist Ray Charles, with The Raelettes vocalist Margie Hendrix. Charles’s recording hit number one for two weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, beginning on Monday, October 9, 1961. “Hit the Road Jack” won a Grammy Award for Best Rhythm and Blues Recording. The song was number one on the R&B Sides chart for five weeks, thereby becoming Charles’s sixth number-one on that chart. The song was ranked number 387 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2010 list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”; it had ranked at number 377 on the original 2004 list.
It’s a slight song, less than two minutes. The setup is simple: The woman knows she’s stuck with someone who is no good, and she’s kicking him out. The guy begs and pleads for another chance, but he knows it’s hopeless. They’re following a script, and they know it. Maybe they’ve had this argument before. Maybe this really is the end. But the contours of it will always be familiar.
Charles isn’t the guy winning the argument, and he’s not the star of the song, either. That would be Margie Hendrix, leader of the Raelettes, Charles’ trio of backup singers. She shows so much fire and personality on “Hit The Road Jack” that it seems criminal that she was consigned to a backup singer role. But “Hit The Road Jack” would be the peak of her career. She was in a relationship with Charles, and they were doing a lot of the same drugs, and maybe having fights not too different from the one outlined in the song. (The song isn’t about their fling, though. Charles’ friend Percy Mayfield, a onetime singer whose performing career ended after a disfiguring car accident, was the one who wrote the song.) A couple of years after “Hit The Road Jack,” Charles fired Hendrix. He survived his addictions, but she didn’t; she died in 1973.
In 2013, the 1961 recording by Ray Charles on the ABC-Paramount label was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The Chantels released an answer song, “Well, I Told You” which charted at No. 29. In 1976, Canadian band the Stampeders released a version of the song taken from their album Steamin’ featuring DJ Wolfman Jack. The song reached No. 6 in Canada, No. 40 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and No. 41 on the US Cash Box Top 100. The single features a conversation between Wolfman Jack and “Cornelius” — the real name of Stampeders bassist Ronnie King.
“Hit The Road Jack” has been covered and sampled dozens of times, including by Charles himself, who turned it into a KFC jingle in the late ’80s. But the track that always springs to my mind is the first one I remember hearing: Debbie D’s Charles-sampling 1989 dance-rap single “Hit The Rap Jack,” which has a perfect title.
