Keith and I have an ongoing contest to see who can plant an earworm in the other’s head!  This time, he got me … in response to a cartoon in my Jolly Monday post, he said the cartoon brought this song, Sam Cooke’s Chain Gang, to mind, and that mention was all it took for my foot to start tapping and the song to start looping endlessly through my head!  So, thanks Keith!  I owe you one!

The immortal Sam Cooke’s own life was filled with tragedy … the drowning death of his 18-month-old son in 1963, a divorce, and ultimately his own death by gunfire in a Los Angeles motel in 1964.  The story behind this song, according to SongFacts …

In 1959, while on tour through the South, Cooke’s tour bus happened upon a chain gang of prisoners in Georgia. There is no definitive way to know which prison, so for the purposes of this article, the Georgia State Prison – just outside Reidsville on Highway 147 – will stand in. At any rate, Cooke and his brother felt sorry for the prisoners, so they ordered the driver to pull over and, after shaking a few hands, passed out cartons of cigarettes before re-boarding to continue their trip. This chance meeting was the catalyst for Cooke’s second most popular hit on the US charts.

Chain gangs, groups of prisoners linked together while performing physical labor, existed mostly in the South until 1955, when the practice was phased out, except in Georgia where chain gangs continued through the 1960s. They were first used during the reconstruction of the south after the Civil War as a way to utilize prisoners as free labor in rebuilding Southern states’ infrastructure. In the ’90s, Alabama reintroduced them again. However, that brief experiment ended almost as quickly as it began with the media awarding it the moniker of “commercialized slavery.”

And from Wikipedia …

This was Cooke’s second-biggest American hit, his first hit single for RCA Victor after leaving Keen Records earlier in 1959, and was also his first top 10 hit since “You Send Me” from 1957, and his second-biggest pop single. The song was inspired after a chance meeting with an actual chain gang of prisoners on a highway, seen while Cooke was on tour.

Released in 1960, the song went to #2 in the U.S. and #9 in the UK.  In 1976, Jim Croce released his version that went to #29 in Canada and #63 in the U.S., but did not chart elsewhere.  Much as I love Jim Croce’s music, I’ll pass on this one and stick with Sam Cooke’s!

Chain Gang

Sam Cooke

(Hoh! Ah!) I hear something saying (Hoh! Ah!)

(Hoh! Ah!)(Well don’t you know)
That’s the sound of the men,
Working on the chain, ga-ang
That’s the sound of the men,
Working on the chain, gang

All day long they’re singing (Hoh! Ah!)

(Well don’t you know)
That’s the sound of the men,
Working on the chain, ga-ang
That’s the sound of the men,
Working on the chain, gang

All day long they work so hard till the sun is going down
Working on the highways and byways and wearing, wearing a frown
You hear they moaning their lives away
Then you hear somebody say

That’s the sound of the men,
Working on the chain, ga-ang
That’s the sound of the men,
Working on the chain, gang

Can’t you hear them singing, mmm (Hoh! Ah!)
I’m going home one of these days
I’m going home, see my woman
Whom I love so dear
But meanwhile I gotta work right here

(Well don’t you know)
That’s the sound of the men,
Working on the chain, ga-ang
That’s the sound of the men,
Working on the chain, gang

All day long they’re singing, mmm (Hoh! Ah!)
My work is so hard
Give me water
I’m thirsty, my work is so hard
Woah ooo
My work is so hard