"Mustang Sally" is a rhythm and blues song written and first recorded by Mack Rice in 1965. It was released on the Blue Rock label in May 1965 with "Sir Mack Rice" as the artist. The song uses an AAB layout with a 24-bar structure. It gained greater popularity when Wilson Pickettcovered it the following year on a single, a version that was also released on the 1966 album, The Wicked Pickett. Also in 1966, John Lee Hooker recorded an entirely different song with a similar title — "Mustang Sally & GTO".
History
Rice was visiting singer Della Reese, who was considering buying a new Lincoln Continental for her drummer and band leader Calvin Shields for his birthday. Rice and other band members were teasing Shields about the pending gift, and Shields replied that he did not want a Lincoln; he wanted a Ford Mustang. Rice had never heard of the Mustang, which had just come out, but he teased Shields about wanting a smaller car. He decided there might be a song in the situation, changing it to be about a woman who doesn't want to do anything but ride around in her new car. Rice called the early version "Mustang Mama", but changed the title after Aretha Franklin suggested "Mustang Sally" because he used the name Sally in the chorus. Rice got part of the chorus from the children's game song "Little Sally Walker," versions of which include the lyrics "Ride Sally ride, wipe your weepin' eyes", with variations. His variation goes, "All you wanna do is ride around, Sally/Ride, Sally, ride/One of these early mornings/You're gonna be wipin' your weepin' eyes." In the liner notes for The Rascals Anthology, Felix Cavaliere states that The Young Rascals recorded "Mustang Sally" and "Land of a Thousand Dances" before Pickett and that Atlantic Records "copped those two songs from them and gave them to Pickett" to record. When Cavaliere does his flashback concerts, he also recounts how Rice thanked him for having been the B-side of the Young Rascals' hit, "Good Lovin'", explaining that the royalties were paid by records sold — thus, the B-side writer was paid for an equal number of sales as the A-side.
Popular versions
Rice's version made it to #15 on the U.S. R&B charts in 1965. Pickett's version climbed to #6 on the R&B charts and #23 on the Pop charts in 1966, #4 in Canada on the charts, and #28 in the UK Singles Chart on its original release and #62, when it was released again in 1987. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Wilson Pickett's recording of the song at #434 on a list of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The song dropped seven spots to #441, when the magazine published its 2010 update of the list.
When astronaut Sally Ride became the first American woman in space on the Space Shuttle Challenger, many in the crowd attending the launch wore T-shirts printed with a play on the lyric, "Ride, Sally Ride".
