Who recorded it first

Everything I Own

Not a Ken Boothe original — a 1972 Bread single

In Britain the song reads as a reggae standard, because Ken Boothe took it to No. 1 in 1974 and Boy George did the same in 1987. But Boothe was covering a record that already existed: “Everything I Own” was written by David Gates and recorded by his band Bread for the album Baby I’m-a Want You, with the single issued on Elektra on 29 January 1972. Gates wrote it as an elegy for his father, who died in 1963 before Bread had any success. The Bread original reached No. 5 on the US Billboard Hot 100 — but only No. 32 in the UK, which is a large part of why British listeners met the song through Boothe.

The record

Who recorded it first

Original recording
Bread — “Everything I Own”
Written by
David Gates
First issued
Single, Elektra, 29 January 1972 (album Baby I’m-a Want You, January 1972)
Famous cover
Ken Boothe, Trojan Records, 1974 — UK No. 1

Released Recorded in Los Angeles in 1971 for Bread’s fourth album Baby I’m-a Want You (Elektra, January 1972) and lifted as a single on 29 January 1972, backed with “I Don’t Love You.” Produced by David Gates.

Charted A hit, but a lopsided one: No. 5 on the US Billboard Hot 100 (Billboard’s No. 52 song of 1972), No. 5 in Canada, No. 12 in Australia — and only No. 32 in the UK.

Hear Bread’s 1972 original recording — the record that came before Ken Boothe. www.youtube.com · Auto-generated “Bread – Topic” channel (distributor upload from the Rhino/Elektra catalogue), not a fan rip. Its 3:07 running time matches the MusicBrainz recording first released in January 1972, so this is the original master rather than a later re-recording.

How we checked

Wikipedia’s entry on the song ↗ states that it was written by David Gates and originally recorded by Bread for the 1972 album Baby I’m-a Want You, with the single released on 29 January 1972 and peaking at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The album page ↗ dates Baby I’m-a Want You to January 1972 on Elektra, recorded in 1971 at Sound Recorders and Sound Labs in Los Angeles and produced by David Gates.

MusicBrainz ↗ holds the Bread recording at 3:07, first released January 1972 and carried on the original Baby I’m-a Want You release — the earliest recording of the song in the database.

Ken Boothe’s page ↗ credits the song to David Gates and notes that Bread’s 1972 version reached only No. 32 in the UK, before Boothe’s Lloyd Charmers-produced Trojan single went to No. 1 in October 1974.

Wikipedia: “Everything I Own” — original and cover versions
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Fact-check

Setting the record straight

British listeners meet this song as reggae, and reasonably assume that is where it started. The chronology says otherwise.

The beliefWidely assumed

Ken Boothe originated “Everything I Own”

His 1974 Trojan single spent three weeks at No. 1 in the UK from 26 October 1974, and Boy George’s 1987 version repeated the feat in the same idiom. Two reggae-styled British No. 1s and no British hit for the original make the song feel Jamaican by origin.

The originalFirst recording

Bread, 1972

Recorded in Los Angeles in 1971 for Baby I’m-a Want You and issued as an Elektra single on 29 January 1972. It reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 — but only No. 32 in the UK.

The writerComposition

David Gates

Gates wrote it and produced the Bread recording. He has said it was written in memory of his father, who died in 1963, not as the love song most listeners hear.

Ken Boothe made it a British standard. David Gates wrote it, and Bread put it on tape first, in 1972.

Context

Why Ken Boothe owns this song in Britain

The usual story of a cover eclipsing an original involves a flop. This one doesn’t. Bread’s “Everything I Own” was a substantial American hit — No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard’s No. 52 song of 1972. It simply didn’t travel. In the UK the Bread single stalled at No. 32, which left the song effectively unclaimed on that side of the Atlantic.

Into that gap came Lloyd Charmers, the Jamaican producer who had a gift for finding the reggae inside American soft rock. His 1974 session at Federal Studios in Kingston put Lloyd Parks on bass, Paul Douglas on drums and Willie Lindo on guitar behind Ken Boothe, with Charmers himself on keyboards, and the result went to No. 1 in Britain and Ireland. Thirteen years on, Boy George’s solo debut — also reggae-inflected, produced by Stewart Levine — went to No. 1 again. Two British chart-toppers in the same idiom, and none for the Los Angeles record that came first.

The chronology, step by step
  • 1963 — David Gates’s father dies, before Bread exists. Gates later says the song was written in his memory.
  • 1971 — Bread record Baby I’m-a Want You at Sound Recorders and Sound Labs in Los Angeles, produced by Gates.
  • January 1972 — the album is released on Elektra; the single “Everything I Own” is issued on 29 January 1972.
  • 1972 — the Bread single reaches No. 5 in the US, No. 5 in Canada, No. 12 in Australia and No. 32 in the UK.
  • 1974 — Ken Boothe’s version, produced by Lloyd Charmers at Federal Studios, Kingston, is released on Trojan Records and tops the UK chart on 26 October, holding for three weeks.
  • 1987 — Boy George’s solo debut single, produced by Stewart Levine, spends two weeks at No. 1 in the UK in March, his only solo UK chart-topper.
  • Later covers include Olivia Newton-John, Crystal Gayle, NSYNC and Vanessa Hudgens.
It was never a flop — it just never crossed the Atlantic.

The original recording artist

Bread

American soft rock band, formed Los Angeles 1968

Bread formed in Los Angeles in 1968 around David Gates and Jimmy Griffin and signed to Elektra Records in January 1969. By the sessions for Baby I’m-a Want You the line-up was Gates, Griffin, drummer Mike Botts and the newly added keyboard player Larry Knechtel. Gates produced the album and wrote and sang the singles; between 1970 and 1973 all eleven of the band’s Billboard Hot 100 entries were his. They first disbanded in June 1973.

Popularly credited as the original

Ken Boothe

b. 22 March 1948, Kingston, Jamaica · reggae vocalist

Kenneth George Boothe is a Jamaican singer known for a vibrato and timbre unlike anyone else in reggae, and his 1974 reading of “Everything I Own” is the version most of Britain carries in its head. Produced by Lloyd Charmers at Federal Studios in Kingston, it went to No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart on 26 October 1974 and stayed three weeks. The only error in the popular memory is chronological: the record is a cover, and a superb one. Trojan Records’ collapse in 1975 meant Boothe saw little of what it earned.

The songwriter

David Gates

b. 11 December 1940, Tulsa, Oklahoma · American singer-songwriter and producer

David Ashworth Gates worked as a Los Angeles session musician, arranger and producer before Bread, writing for other acts along the way. He wrote and sang almost every Bread hit — “Make It with You,” “If,” “Baby I’m-a Want You,” “Everything I Own” — and later had solo success with “Goodbye Girl.” He has said the song was written in memory of his father, who died in 1963; listeners have consistently heard it as a romantic song instead.