Who recorded it first

Black Magic Woman

Not a Santana original — a 1968 Fleetwood Mac song by Peter Green

The twist has two parts. Almost everyone takes ‘Black Magic Woman’ for a Santana original, but Santana’s 1970 version is a cover — and the band they covered is one most people would never guess. The song was written by Peter Green and first recorded by Fleetwood Mac in 1968, in the years when Fleetwood Mac was a British blues band led by Green, long before the Rumours-era pop group most listeners picture.

The record

Who recorded it first

Original recording
Fleetwood Mac, 1968
Written by
Peter Green
First released
March 1968 (Blue Horizon) — UK No. 37
Made famous by
Santana, 1970 (US No. 4)

How we traced it

The song was written by Peter Green and first recorded by Fleetwood Mac, released as a single in March 1968 on the Blue Horizon label Wikipedia ↗.

This was the original, blues-focused Fleetwood Mac that Green had founded in 1967 — a very different band from the pop group of Rumours. Green wrote, sang, and played guitar on the record, which reached No. 37 in the UK and made no impression in America.

Santana recorded their Latin-rock version for the 1970 album Abraxas, pairing it with Gábor Szabó’s ‘Gypsy Queen’. It reached No. 4 on the US pop chart and so thoroughly eclipsed the original that most listeners now assume it began with Santana SecondHandSongs ↗.

SecondHandSongs — the original and every cover
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Fact-check

The attribution problem

This is a double misattribution: nothing about Santana’s record is wrong or fake, but it is a cover — and the band it covers is not the Fleetwood Mac most people know. A 1970 cover mistaken for the source, and a blues band mistaken for a pop one.

The beliefcover, not original

‘It’s a Santana song’

Santana’s 1970 version is a cover. The song was written by Peter Green and recorded two years earlier, in 1968, by Fleetwood Mac the history ↗.

The originalthe blues-era band

Fleetwood Mac, 1968

This was Peter Green’s blues band, not the Rumours pop group — a distinction most listeners never make, which is why even people who know the name miss the connection.

The writerneither the famous band nor Santana

Peter Green

Green wrote and first recorded the song, yet he is the least-remembered figure attached to it. Authorship and fame belong to different people here.

Written by Peter Green, first recorded by the blues-era Fleetwood Mac in 1968, and made famous — but not originated — by Santana in 1970 the record ↗.

Context

Why the cover ate the original

A cover eclipses its original most completely when the original has nowhere to hide. Fleetwood Mac’s 1968 ‘Black Magic Woman’ was a modest UK hit that never charted in America at all, so when Santana’s version arrived in 1970 there was no famous first record occupying the public’s memory to displace.

The confusion is compounded by a second gap: the band that recorded the original barely resembles the Fleetwood Mac most people know. In 1968 it was Peter Green’s blues group; by the late 1970s it was a California pop juggernaut with an almost entirely different line-up. Even listeners who know the name rarely connect it to a Santana song.

The two records, in order
  • Peter Green writes ‘Black Magic Woman’ for his blues band Fleetwood Mac.
  • Fleetwood Mac record it first and release it as a single (March 1968, Blue Horizon).
  • The original reaches UK No. 37 and does not chart in the US.
  • Santana cover it for the album Abraxas, in a medley with ‘Gypsy Queen’ (1970, Columbia).
  • Santana’s version reaches US No. 4 and becomes the definitive one; the 1968 original fades from public memory.
Even people who know the name Fleetwood Mac rarely connect the blues band that wrote it to a Santana hit.

The writer and original guitarist

Peter Green

1946–2020 · British blues guitarist and songwriter

Peter Green (1946–2020) was the British blues guitarist who wrote ‘Black Magic Woman’ and recorded it first with Fleetwood Mac in 1968 — a band he had founded the year before. He was one of the finest blues players of his generation, admired by B.B. King among others, but struggled with mental illness and left the group in 1970. It is one of pop’s quieter ironies that the man who wrote a Santana staple is remembered, if at all, as a footnote to a band that became famous without him.

The original recording artist

Fleetwood Mac

British band · formed 1967

Fleetwood Mac recorded the original ‘Black Magic Woman’ in 1968, when they were a British blues band led by Peter Green — not the multi-platinum pop group of the Rumours era that most people picture. Only the rhythm section, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, carried through to the later line-up. The gap between those two Fleetwood Macs is a large part of why the song’s origin is so widely missed.

Popularly credited as the original

Santana

American Latin-rock band · formed 1966

Santana — the Latin-rock band led by guitarist Carlos Santana — released their cover of ‘Black Magic Woman’ on the 1970 album Abraxas, folding it into a medley with ‘Gypsy Queen’. Their version reached No. 4 in the US and became so identified with the band that the Fleetwood Mac original vanished from public memory. The record is genuinely theirs and genuinely great; the only error is assuming a 1970 Santana hit must be where the song began.