Who recorded it first
The First Cut Is the Deepest
Not a Rod Stewart original — a 1967 P. P. Arnold single on Immediate
Rod Stewart’s reading is so completely his own that most listeners file the song under his name. It is a cover. The first release belongs to P. P. Arnold, the American soul singer who arrived in England with the Ike & Tina Turner Revue and stayed — her single came out on Immediate Records on 21 April 1967 ↗, catalogue IM 047. It was written by Cat Stevens, who handed it over before he had made a name as a singer and did not issue his own recording until his album New Masters in December of that same year. Arnold’s record was no obscurity either: it reached No. 18 on the UK singles chart.
The record
Who recorded it first
Released Issued as a 7-inch A-side on Immediate Records, catalogue IM 047, on 21 April 1967, backed with “Speak to Me.” It was later gathered onto Arnold’s album The First Lady of Immediate.
Charted Reached No. 18 on the UK Singles Chart — a genuine hit at the time, not a lost curio.
How the song travelled
1965 — Cat Stevens cuts a demo of the song, written to pitch to other artists; it is never issued, per Wikipedia ↗, citing Yusuf Islam’s official biography.
21 April 1967 — P. P. Arnold’s single is released on Immediate Records, catalogue IM 047, with “Speak to Me” on the flip. It climbs to No. 18 in the UK. The release is catalogued on MusicBrainz ↗.
5 October 1967 — Stevens records his own version at Decca Studios in West Hampstead, London, with guitarist Big Jim Sullivan, per Wikipedia’s song article ↗.
15 December 1967 — That recording reaches the public on New Masters for Deram/Decca, nearly eight months after Arnold’s single.
April 1973 — Canadian singer Keith Hampshire’s A&M single is released; it tops the Canadian RPM 100 on 12 May 1973 and reaches No. 70 on the US Billboard Hot 100 — a hit version sitting between the original and the one everyone remembers.
1977 — Rod Stewart’s single, drawn from A Night on the Town, spends four weeks at No. 1 in the UK as a double A-side and becomes, for most listeners, the definitive version.
MusicBrainz: the 21 April 1967 Immediate single (IM 047)Know more about the original — or think we’ve got it wrong? Add a source →
Fact-check
The record, straightened out
Almost nobody claims Rod Stewart wrote the song — the Cat Stevens credit is well known. The confusion is about whose voice reached it first, and there the popular answer is wrong.
Rod Stewart, 1977
His single topped the UK chart for four weeks and has never left the radio. For most listeners it is not a cover of anything; it is simply the song.
P. P. Arnold, 21 April 1967
Released on Immediate Records, catalogue IM 047, with “Speak to Me” as the B-side. It reached No. 18 in the UK.
Cat Stevens
He wrote it and demoed it privately in 1965, but that demo was never issued; his own released version came on New Masters in December 1967 — after Arnold’s single, not before it. Even Wikidata’s summary line gets this the wrong way round.
Keith Hampshire, April 1973
The Canadian singer’s A&M single, released that April, topped the Canadian RPM 100 on 12 May 1973 — years before Stewart — and reached No. 70 in the US. A hit version that has fallen out of the story entirely.
P. P. Arnold’s was the first released recording, on Immediate Records, on 21 April 1967 — written by Cat Stevens, and released ahead of his own version.
Context
Why the cover ate the original
The interesting question is not why Rod Stewart’s version is famous — it was No. 1 for four weeks and it earned that. The question is why P. P. Arnold’s is not, given that it was a top-twenty hit in its own right. Part of the answer is the label: Immediate Records was Andrew Loog Oldham’s operation, brilliant and chaotic, and it did not survive to keep her catalogue in print and in reissue the way a major would have.
The other part is that a song can only be re-introduced so many times before one voice claims it outright. By the time Stewart reached it, Cat Stevens had recorded it himself and Keith Hampshire had taken it to No. 1 in Canada. Stewart’s was the fourth notable pass and the one that stuck — so much so that Sheryl Crow’s 2003 hit was heard as a cover of a song most of her listeners already thought of as his.
The full chronology
- 1965 — Cat Stevens cuts a demo of the song to pitch it to other artists. It is never issued.
- 21 April 1967 — P. P. Arnold’s single is released on Immediate Records (IM 047), backed with “Speak to Me.” It reaches No. 18 in the UK.
- 5 October 1967 — Stevens records his own version at Decca Studios, London, with guitarist Big Jim Sullivan.
- 15 December 1967 — That recording is released on the album New Masters for Deram/Decca.
- April 1973 — Keith Hampshire’s A&M single is released; it reaches No. 1 in Canada on 12 May 1973 and No. 70 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
- 1976 — Rod Stewart records the song for the album A Night on the Town.
- 1977 — Stewart’s single reaches No. 1 in the UK for four weeks, as a double A-side with “I Don’t Want to Talk About It”, and No. 21 in the US.
- 22 September 2003 — Sheryl Crow’s version is released on A&M and reaches No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary chart.
A top-twenty hit in 1967 is still the original, even when a bigger one arrives later.