Baby What You Want Me to Do
| "Baby What You Want Me to Do" | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Single by Jimmy Reed | |
| B-side | "Caress Me, Baby" |
| Released | November 1959 |
| Format | 10-inch 78 rpm & 7-inch 45 rpm record |
| Recorded | Chicago, August 7, 1959 |
| Genre | Blues |
| Length | 2:22 |
| Label | Vee-Jay (no. 333) |
| Songwriter(s) | Jimmy Reed |
"Baby What You Want Me to Do" (sometimes called "You Got Me Running" or "You Got Me Runnin'") is a blues song that was written and recorded by Jimmy Reed in 1959. It was a record chart hit for Reed and, as with several of his songs, it has appeal across popular music genres, with numerous recordings by a variety of musical artists.
"Baby What You Want Me to Do" is a mid-tempo blues shuffle in the key of E that features "Reed's unique, lazy loping style of vocals, guitar and harmonica." In a 1959 review by Billboard magazine, it was called "uninhibited and swampy ... deliver[ed] freely in classic, gutbucket fashion." Music critic Cub Koda describes it as "deceptively simple" and as "one of the true irreducibles [sic] of the blues, a song so basic and simple it seems like it's existed forever." However, unlike a typical twelve-bar blues, it includes chord substitutions in bars nine and ten:
Backing Reed are his wife Mary "Mama" Reed on harmony vocal, Eddie Taylor and Lefty Bates on guitars, Marcus Johnson on bass, and Earl Phillips on drums.
Jimmy Reed received the sole credit for the song, although blues historian Gerard Herzhaft points out "like almost all of Reed's pieces and whatever the official credits are, it is an original composition by his wife, Mama Reed." Mama Reed can be heard at the recording session for the song:
Of note, nowhere in the song do the lyrics "baby what you want me to do" appear, although later cover versions would often wrongly include the phrase in place of the original "baby why you wanna let go." "Baby What You Want Me to Do" was included on Jimmy Reed's second album Found Love (1960), the Jimmy Reed at Carnegie Hall album (1961), as well as numerous compilation albums.
"Baby What You Want Me to Do" reached number 10 in the Billboard R&B chart and number 37 in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1960. In 2004, Reed's song was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in the "Classic of Blues Recordings" category.
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