Who recorded it first
Everybody Needs Somebody to Love
Not a Blues Brothers original — a 1964 Solomon Burke single on Atlantic
Ask most people where “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” comes from and the answer is Jake and Elwood Blues in the 1980 film. The record they are thinking of is a cover. Solomon Burke recorded the song on 28 May 1964, produced by Bert Berns, and Atlantic issued it as a single that July; Burke shares the writing credit with Berns and Jerry Wexler. The original was not a hit — it charted for eight weeks and stalled at No. 58 on the US pop chart — and it took The Rolling Stones, Wilson Pickett and finally The Blues Brothers to turn it into a standard.
The record
Who recorded it first
Released Issued as a 7-inch single on Atlantic Records in July 1964, catalogue number 2241, backed with “Looking for My Baby.” The master was cut at a session on 28 May 1964 produced by Bert Berns.
Charted Peaked at No. 58 on the US pop chart, with eight weeks on the survey — a minor showing. The song's best chart result came later, from Wilson Pickett's cover: No. 29 pop and No. 19 R&B in early 1967.
Hear Solomon Burke's original 1964 Atlantic recording, 2:46 www.youtube.com · Auto-generated “Provided to YouTube by Rhino Atlantic” upload on the official Solomon Burke Topic channel; the description carries ℗ 1964 Atlantic Recording Corporation, and the runtime of 2:46 matches the 2:45 MusicBrainz recording attached to the 1964 US single.How it travelled
Atlantic put it out in July 1964 as a single and it went almost nowhere — No. 58, eight weeks — per the song's recording history ↗.
The Rolling Stones recorded it in January 1965 for The Rolling Stones No. 2, with a version also turning up on the US album The Rolling Stones, Now! — documented here ↗.
Wilson Pickett's 1966 cover, from The Wicked Pickett, gave the song its highest chart placing: No. 29 pop and No. 19 R&B in early 1967.
The Blues Brothers took it into the 1980 film and onto the Atlantic soundtrack album ↗, which reached No. 13 on the Billboard 200 — on the same label that had released Burke's single.
The song's full recording and cover historyKnow more about the original — or think we’ve got it wrong? Add a source →
Fact-check
Right song, wrong starting point
The 1980 film is where most people met this song, so the film is where most people think it began. The recording history says otherwise, and it is not close.
The Blues Brothers
Belushi and Aykroyd's version appears in the 1980 film and on the Atlantic soundtrack released 20 June 1980. It is a cover of a record Atlantic had already released in 1964 — and it was not even the first famous cover.
Solomon Burke
Recorded 28 May 1964 at Atlantic, produced by Bert Berns, and released as a single in July 1964 as Atlantic 2241 backed with “Looking for My Baby.” It charted for eight weeks and peaked at No. 58.
Bert Berns, Solomon Burke and Jerry Wexler
All three names are on the credit. Burke later said he wrote it alone, from a march he remembered from church, and was persuaded to share the credit with his producer and his label boss. That dispute is about authorship, not about who recorded it first.
Wilson Pickett
Often forgotten in this argument: Pickett's version, from The Wicked Pickett, reached No. 29 pop and No. 19 R&B in early 1967 — the song's strongest chart performance, and long before the film.
Solomon Burke recorded it first, in May 1964. Everything else — the Stones, Pickett, the Blues Brothers — is a cover.
Context
Why the cover swallowed the original
The interesting question is not why The Blues Brothers version is famous — it comes attached to a hit film — but why there was so little competition for the memory. Burke's single simply did not travel. It charted for eight weeks and peaked at No. 58 on the US pop chart, which means most listeners in 1964 never heard it at all. A song that never lodged as a hit leaves no impression for a later version to displace.
What happened instead is that the song became famous through its covers, in stages. The Rolling Stones recorded it in January 1965 and put it on The Rolling Stones No. 2; Wilson Pickett cut it for The Wicked Pickett in 1966 and took it to No. 29 pop and No. 19 R&B, the song's best chart showing by some distance. By the time Belushi and Aykroyd got to it, it was already a standard with no single owner in the public mind — and a film gave it one.
The chronology, step by step
- 28 May 1964 — Solomon Burke records the song for Atlantic, produced by Bert Berns. Writing credit: Berns, Burke and Jerry Wexler.
- July 1964 — Atlantic issues it as a single, catalogue 2241, backed with “Looking for My Baby.” It charts for eight weeks and peaks at No. 58 on the US pop chart.
- January 1965 — The Rolling Stones record their version, which appears on The Rolling Stones No. 2 in the UK and on the US album The Rolling Stones, Now!
- 1966 — Wilson Pickett records it for The Wicked Pickett; his version reaches No. 29 pop and No. 19 R&B in early 1967, the song's biggest chart result.
- 20 June 1980 — The Blues Brothers version appears on the Atlantic soundtrack to the film. The album reaches No. 13 on the Billboard 200 and is certified platinum in the US.
- 1989–1990 — The Blues Brothers recording is issued as a UK single; a 1990 reissue backed with “Minnie the Moocher” peaks at No. 12 in the UK.
The original never charted high enough to be remembered, so the cover had nothing to displace.