Who recorded it first
Goo Goo Muck
Not a Cramps original — a 1962 Ronnie Cook and the Gaylads single
After Netflix’s Wednesday sent the record viral in November 2022, almost every headline called it “the Cramps song” — and The Cramps neither wrote it nor recorded it first. “The Goo Goo Muck” was written by Ronnie Cook and Ed James and first recorded by Ronnie Cook and the Gaylads, who issued it in 1962 on the Audan Record Company, a small label in Bakersfield, California. The Cramps recorded their version at A&M Studios in January 1981 for Psychedelic Jungle. The 1962 single sank without a national chart placing; the song’s first UK chart run came sixty years later, with the 1981 recording, in December 2022, and it was on the Official Singles Sales Chart rather than the main Top 100.
The record
Who recorded it first
Released Issued in 1962 as a 7-inch single on the Audan Record Company (Audan A-122), a small label in Bakersfield, California, under the slightly fuller title “The Goo Goo Muck” — written by its own singer, Ronnie Cook, with lyricist Ed James. No source records when it was actually cut; 1962 is the release year.
Charted No national chart placing is recorded for the 1962 single. It was a regional novelty hit on a label with no real distribution, and it never travelled beyond Kern County.
How the 1962 record checks out
The redirect tells the story on its own: English Wikipedia has no article for the song, only for the album that carries the cover — Psychedelic Jungle ↗, which credits “Goo Goo Muck” to Ronnie Cook and Ed James and names Ronnie Cook and the Gaylads as the 1962 original.
Louder ↗ traces the record to the Audan Record Company of Bakersfield and to Cook himself — a local rhythm-and-blues singer who had fronted The Diamonds and cut “Doin’ Time” for Lew Bedell’s Dore label in 1961.
MusicBrainz holds the composition as a single work with two writers — Ronnie Cook as composer, Ed James as lyricist ↗, ISWC T-700.017.627-4 — with nineteen recordings hanging off it. That entry settles the writing credits and nothing else: none of the nineteen carries a 1962 date, so the first-recording year rests on Wikipedia, Louder and the discographies, not on MusicBrainz.
The chart record is unambiguous about which version the public bought: the Official Charts Company ↗ logs the song’s first UK entry on 8 December 2022, credited to Cramps, peaking at No. 42 on the Official Singles Sales Chart and No. 38 on the Official Singles Downloads Chart — component charts, not the Official Singles Chart Top 100.
The 2022 news coverage almost universally called it a Cramps song. NME ↗ is the exception worth citing: it names Ronnie Cook and The Gaylads as the original artists and dates their release to 1962, while reporting the US on-demand jump from about 2,500 daily streams to 134,000 in five days.
The paper trail on the rights runs through Bakersfield: Billboard ↗ reports that Dave Bell, the producer and label owner who put out the 1962 single, signed the publishing over to Jim Shaw of Buck Owens’ Buckaroos in 2002 in lieu of money he owed him, and that Shaw mails a share of the royalties to the families of Cook and James.
MusicBrainz — the work “Goo Goo Muck” and its recordingsKnow more about the original — or think we’ve got it wrong? Add a source →
Fact-check
What people get wrong
The confusion here is not that anyone doubts The Cramps covered things — covering obscure records was the band’s stated project. It is that in the 2022 avalanche of coverage, the shorthand hardened into “the Cramps song”, full stop, and the 1962 record disappeared underneath it.
The Cramps, 1981
Their Psychedelic Jungle recording is the one in Wednesday, the one on Spotify, and the one the Official Charts Company credited when the song finally reached a UK chart in December 2022 — No. 42 on the Official Singles Sales Chart and No. 38 on the Official Singles Downloads Chart, both component charts rather than the Top 100. It is not the first recording.
Ronnie Cook and the Gaylads, 1962
Released as “The Goo Goo Muck” on the Audan Record Company of Bakersfield, California. No national chart placing, no reissue that ever moved the credit — Astra put it out again in 1965 and Norton Records has kept it in print since 1999 as Norton 823 — and no article of its own on English Wikipedia; the title redirects to the album that carries the cover.
Ronnie Cook and Ed James
Cook wrote the music and sang it; James wrote the words. This is the unusual case where the original recording artist is also the songwriter, which makes the credit line on the 1981 record easy to check and easy to miss.
Jim Shaw, from Dave Bell, 2002
Dave Bell — the Bakersfield producer and label owner who put the 1962 single out, and who died in 2013 — signed the publishing over in 2002 to Jim Shaw, keyboardist in Buck Owens’ Buckaroos and caretaker of the Owens catalogue, in lieu of loans he could not repay. Shaw collected a trickle on it until Wednesday arrived, and Billboard ↗ reports he mails a share to the families of Cook and James, both now dead.
“The Goo Goo Muck” was written by Ronnie Cook and Ed James and first recorded by Ronnie Cook and the Gaylads for Audan Records in 1962. The Cramps recorded their version in January 1981.
Context
Why the 1981 record ate the 1962 one
The interesting question is not why The Cramps got the credit — it is why the original was so completely available to be forgotten. The Audan Record Company was a small Bakersfield label with no distribution to speak of, and Ronnie Cook’s single left no chart trace and no myth behind it. Collectors did keep the record itself alive — Astra reissued the 45 in 1965, and Norton Records, whose whole business is putting forgotten singles back in print, has sold it as Norton 823 since 1999 — but a record can be in print and still lose its own name, and none of that ever shifted the credit line by an inch. The Cramps did not steal an origin story from the record. They supplied the first one it ever had.
Then the second eclipse happened, and this time it was measurable. When Netflix released Wednesday in November 2022, US on-demand streams of the song went from around 2,500 a day to more than 134,000, and Spotify streams rose by roughly 9,500 per cent. The record entered a UK chart for the first time on 8 December 2022 — sixty years after the original was issued and forty-one after The Cramps recorded it — peaking at No. 42 on the Official Singles Sales Chart. Every one of those listeners arrived at a 1962 Bakersfield novelty single through a 1981 Hollywood cover in a streaming series, and the credit line they saw said Cramps.
The full chronology
- 1962 — Ronnie Cook and the Gaylads release “The Goo Goo Muck”, written by Cook with lyricist Ed James, as a 7-inch single on the Audan Record Company of Bakersfield, California (Audan A-122). No source records the session date; 1962 is the release year. It draws no national chart action.
- January 1981 — The Cramps cut their version at A&M Studios in Hollywood, self-produced and engineered by Paul McKenna.
- 27 March 1981 — Psychedelic Jungle is released on I.R.S. Records in the US and UK, with Illegal Records handling Australia and New Zealand. “Goo Goo Muck” is pulled as a single, backed with the band’s cover of Hasil Adkins’ “She Said”.
- 1965 and 1999 — the 1962 single is reissued twice, first by Astra and then by Norton Records as Norton 823, backed with “The Scotch”. Neither pressing dents the public credit line.
- 1986 — the recording turns up in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, its first significant screen placement.
- 2002 — Dave Bell, the Bakersfield producer who released the original, signs the publishing over to Jim Shaw of Buck Owens’ Buckaroos to settle old loans.
- November 2022 — Wednesday premieres on Netflix and the dance scene set to the record goes viral. US daily on-demand streams climb from about 2,500 to over 134,000; Spotify streams rise roughly 9,500 per cent. Writing in the Guardian, Janelle Zara suggested the moment had more or less revived goth for Gen Z single-handed.
- 8 December 2022 — the song enters the Official UK charts for the first time in its existence, credited to Cramps, peaking at No. 42 on the Singles Sales Chart and No. 38 on the Singles Downloads Chart across an eight-week run to 26 January 2023.
A Bakersfield 45 that failed, a Hollywood cover that stuck, and a dance scene that did the rest.