In 1962, R&B singer James Ray, recorded and released the Rudy Clark-penned song “Got My Mind Set on You,” which followed the artist’s previous hit “If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody,” which had already made the rounds on the Beatles’ live sets.
John Lennon also featured the latter Ray single as one of his favorite songs on his 1960s jukebox, a playlist that was later released as an album in 2004.
Another link between Ray and the Beatles came when George Harrison covered “I Got My Mind Set on You” on his eleventh solo album Cloud Nine in 1987. Harrison retitled the song, which he first heard nearly 25 years earlier, “Got My Mind Set on You.”
Released on October 12, 1987, as the closing track on Cloud Nine, “Got My Mind Set on You” went to No. 1 on January 16, 1988, and marked Harrison’s first chart topping hit in 15 years. At the time Harrison became the act with the longest time between No. 1 hits since “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth),” the opening track from his 1973 album Living in the Material World, and his second No. 1 following “My Sweet Lord” in 1970.
Nearly 25 years before recording it, Harrison discovered the song in the early ’60s, before the Beatles made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in New York City. Harrison and his brother Peter were visiting their sister Louise, who was living in Benton, Illinois, when he purchased a copy of Ray’s self-titled debut album, featuring “I Got My Mind Set On You.”
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[RELATED: Meaning Behind “Got My Mind Set on You” by George Harrison]
“It’s been around, in the back of my head for years,” said Harrison of the song in a 1987 interview with Entertainment Tonight. “I got it, I think the first I came to the states. It must have been 1961.”
He continued, “This song ‘Got My Mind Set On You’ was on the album written by the same fella who wrote ‘If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody.’ It’s a guy called Rudy Clark. I don’t really know anything about him except it was a real good song. The version that I refer to was a bit strange. Because it was a very old-fashioned record with a lot of screechy girl singers. It’s like an old jazzy sort of thing. Anyway, the song itself stuck in my head and every so often I just sang it to myself.”
Ballerinas, an Amusement Park, and ‘Evil Dead’
Once released, two videos emerged around Harrison’s hit, including an earlier release, showing Harrison, Cloud Nine co-producer Jeff Lynne, and the rest of the band playing inside a coin-operated movie projector with a ballet dancer, while How I Met Your Mother actor Alexis Denisof, who is in the “outside world,” is trying to win a toy ballerina for a girl at am amusement park arcade.
A second video played like more of a take on the Sam Raimi comedy-horror Evil Dead II with Harrison sitting in a room, playing his guitar while inanimate objects begin shifting all around him.
Shortly after Harrison went to No. 1, the Beach Boys also broke his record with their first No. 1 in 22 years when “Kokomo” topped the charts in November of 1987.
A year after releasing “Got My Mind Set on You,” Harrison grouped up with the Traveling Wilburys along with Lynne, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison. “Got My Mind Set on You” was also Harrison’s final solo hit before his death in 2001.
Photo: Solomon N’Jie/Getty Images
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