Who recorded it first

Fever

Not a Peggy Lee original — a 1956 Little Willie John single

Almost everyone takes ‘Fever’ for a Peggy Lee original, but Lee’s 1958 version is a cover. The song was written by Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell and first recorded by Little Willie John in 1956 for King Records — an R&B No. 1 that sold a million copies. Lee picked it up two years later, stripped the arrangement to almost nothing, and turned the cover into the standard everyone now knows.

The record

Who recorded it first

Original recording
Little Willie John, 1956
Written by
Eddie Cooley & Otis Blackwell
First released
April 1956 (King Records) — R&B No. 1, million-seller
Made famous by
Peggy Lee, 1958 (US No. 8)

How we traced it

The song was written by Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell — Blackwell credited under the pen name ‘John Davenport’, which he used during a dispute with his publisher — and first recorded by Little Willie John in March 1956 for King Records Wikipedia ↗.

John’s original was a substantial hit: it topped the Billboard R&B chart, reached No. 24 on the pop chart, and sold over a million copies. It was a full-band R&B record, not the hushed thing the song later became.

Peggy Lee recorded her version in May 1958, paring the arrangement down to finger-snaps, bass and voice and adding new verses of her own. Released on Capitol, it reached No. 8, earned three Grammy nominations, and so redefined the song that most listeners now assume she originated it SecondHandSongs ↗.

SecondHandSongs — the original and every cover
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Fact-check

The attribution problem

This is a generous kind of misattribution: Peggy Lee’s record really is the definitive one. The only error is believing she originated the song — a 1958 cover mistaken for the source.

The beliefcover, not original

‘It’s a Peggy Lee song’

Lee’s 1958 version is a cover. The song was written by Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell and recorded two years earlier, in 1956, by Little Willie John the history ↗.

The originalfirst to record it

Little Willie John, 1956

John’s King single was an R&B No. 1 and a million-seller — a real hit, but one confined largely to the R&B audience, which is part of why Lee’s pop cover could overshadow it so completely.

The writersneither performer

Eddie Cooley & Otis Blackwell

Cooley and Blackwell wrote the song; neither sang either famous version, and Blackwell’s name is doubly hidden behind the pseudonym ‘John Davenport’. Authorship and performance are different things, and here they belong to different people entirely.

Written by Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell, first recorded by Little Willie John in 1956, and made famous — but not originated — by Peggy Lee in 1958 the record ↗.

Context

Why the cover ate the original

Little Willie John’s ‘Fever’ was a hit, but it was an R&B hit — huge on its own chart and only a modest crossover on the pop side. That left room for a pop cover to reach a much wider audience, and when Peggy Lee’s version arrived in 1958 it did exactly that, sliding into the space the original had never fully occupied.

The irony is that Lee did not just re-sing the song — she rebuilt it. She stripped the full-band arrangement down to bass, snaps and voice and added new verses of her own, and that reinvention became the template every later version copied. When a cover changes what a song sounds like this decisively, listeners stop hearing it as anyone else’s.

The records, in order
  • Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell write the song (Blackwell as ‘John Davenport’).
  • Little Willie John records it first, March 1956; released April 1956 on King.
  • The original tops the R&B chart, reaches No. 24 pop, and sells a million.
  • Peggy Lee records her stripped-down version, May 1958, adding new verses.
  • Released June 1958 on Capitol → US No. 8; it becomes the definitive reading, and the original fades from public memory.
The rare case where the cover is the iconic record — yet it is still a cover.

The original recording artist

Little Willie John

1937–1968 · American R&B singer

Little Willie John (1937–1968) was an American R&B singer who recorded ‘Fever’ first, in 1956, when he was still a teenager. His version was a genuine smash — an R&B No. 1 and a million-seller — yet within a couple of years Peggy Lee’s cover had eclipsed it almost entirely. He died in prison at 30, and it is a quiet cruelty of pop history that the song he took to the top is now filed under someone else’s name.

Popularly credited as the original

Peggy Lee

1920–2002 · American singer and songwriter

Peggy Lee (1920–2002) recorded ‘Fever’ in 1958 and made it hers so completely that it became her signature song. She rebuilt the arrangement into the famous stripped-down version — little more than voice, bass and finger-snaps — and wrote new verses that most later performers have kept. This is the rare misattribution where the cover is the more iconic record; the only error is forgetting it was a cover at all.

The songwriters

Eddie Cooley & Otis Blackwell

Cooley 1933–2020 · Blackwell 1931–2002 · American songwriters

Eddie Cooley (1933–2020) and Otis Blackwell (1931–2002) wrote ‘Fever’, with Blackwell credited under the pseudonym ‘John Davenport’ — a pen name he adopted during a publishing dispute. Blackwell is one of the great hidden hands of early rock and roll, author of ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ and ‘Great Balls of Fire’. They are the figures the song’s fame obscures entirely: not the famous performer, not the original singer, but the writers whose names almost no one attaches to it.