Who recorded it first
Mustang Sally
Not a Wilson Pickett original — a 1965 Sir Mack Rice single on Blue Rock
Ask most people who made “Mustang Sally” and you get Wilson Pickett. But the song was written and first recorded by Mack Rice, issued in 1965 on Mercury’s soul subsidiary Blue Rock under the billing “Sir Mack Rice.” Rice’s own record was no obscurity — it reached No. 15 on the U.S. R&B chart. Pickett cut it for Atlantic in 1966, and that version became so definitive that the 1965 original effectively vanished from public memory.
The record
Who recorded it first
Released Issued as a 7-inch single, Blue Rock 4014, in 1965, credited to “Sir Mack Rice”, with “Daddy’s Home to Stay” on the B-side. Blue Rock was Mercury Records’ Chicago-based soul subsidiary, active 1964–1969.
Charted Reached No. 15 on the U.S. R&B chart in 1965 — a genuine hit, not a flop that needed rescuing.
Hear Mack Rice’s own 1965 recording of “Mustang Sally” — the record that came before Wilson Pickett’s. www.youtube.com · Auto-generated “Mack Rice - Topic” channel; the description reads “Provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group” with a ℗ 1965 line (The Island Def Jam Music Group). Runtime is 186 seconds, matching the 3:06 length of the MusicBrainz recording for the original single exactly.How we know
The Wikipedia article on the song ↗ states plainly that Mack Rice wrote and first recorded it, released on Blue Rock (4014) as “Sir Mack Rice”, and that his version reached No. 15 R&B. We give the year only: Wikipedia says “May 1965”, but the sentence is footnoted to a Billboard singles-review page dated 27 March 1965, which cannot support a May issue date.
MusicBrainz ↗ holds the Sir Mack Rice recording at 3:06, attached to the 1965 US single paired with “Daddy’s Home to Stay”.
Blue Rock Records ↗ is documented as a Mercury soul subsidiary running 1964–1969, and lists Mack Rice’s 1965 “Mustang Sally” among its releases.
Rice’s biography ↗ confirms he sang with the Falcons from 1957 to 1963 alongside Wilson Pickett — the two men knew each other long before the cover.
“Mustang Sally” on Wikipedia — writer, original recording and cover historyKnow more about the original — or think we’ve got it wrong? Add a source →
Fact-check
The record, corrected
“Mustang Sally” is one of the most-covered songs in soul, and the version everyone carries in their head is Wilson Pickett’s. It is a cover.
Wilson Pickett originated “Mustang Sally”
His 1966 Atlantic recording is the standard reference version — a Grammy Hall of Fame inductee and a bar-band staple — so it is routinely treated as the song’s first appearance.
Sir Mack Rice, Blue Rock 4014, 1965
Rice cut the song himself and it reached No. 15 on the U.S. R&B chart in 1965, the year before Pickett recorded it.
Mack Rice
Rice wrote the song outright — here the first recording artist and the songwriter are the same person, which is what makes the misattribution unusually complete.
Wilson Pickett made it famous in 1966. Mack Rice wrote it and recorded it first, in 1965.
Context
Why the cover swallowed the original
Mack Rice’s version was not a failure that Pickett rescued. It was an R&B hit in its own right, peaking at No. 15 in 1965 on Blue Rock, a Mercury soul subsidiary based in Chicago that ran from 1964 to 1969 and never had the reach of Atlantic. That is most of the story: the same song, a year apart, on labels with wildly different promotional muscle and pop-crossover reach.
The rest is the record itself. Pickett’s Atlantic cut crossed to No. 23 on the pop chart and No. 28 in the UK, became a bar-band and wedding-set standard, entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000 and landed on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs list. An R&B chart entry from a Mercury imprint could not survive that. There is even a wrinkle about how Pickett got it: Felix Cavaliere of the Young Rascals claimed in liner notes that his band recorded “Mustang Sally” and “Land of a Thousand Dances” before Pickett did, and that Atlantic took both songs from them and handed them to Pickett. Even if so, that would still be 1966 — a year after Rice — so it does not disturb who recorded it first.
The chronology, step by step
- Mack Rice writes the song after a visit to singer Della Reese, where her drummer and bandleader Calvin Shields says he would rather have a Ford Mustang than a Lincoln Continental.
- Rice’s working title is “Mustang Mama”; Aretha Franklin suggests “Mustang Sally” instead, after the name he had already used in the chorus.
- 1965: Blue Rock 4014 is released, credited to “Sir Mack Rice”, backed with “Daddy’s Home to Stay”.
- 1965: the single reaches No. 15 on the U.S. R&B chart.
- 1966: Wilson Pickett records it for Atlantic; it appears on The Wicked Pickett and reaches No. 6 R&B, No. 23 pop, No. 4 in Canada and No. 28 in the UK.
- 1987: Pickett’s version is reissued in the UK and charts again at No. 62.
- 2000: Pickett’s Atlantic recording is inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Rice’s record was a hit. Pickett’s was a monument.