"Got My Mojo Working" is a 1956

1956 in music

-Events:*January 26 – Buddy Holly's first recording sessions for Decca Records take place in Nashville, Tennessee*Roy Orbison signs with Sun Records*January 27 – Elvis Presley's single "Heartbreak Hotel" / "I Was the One" is released...

 song written by Preston Foster and first recorded by Ann Cole

Ann Cole

Ann Cole was an American R&B and former gospel singer, who was the first artist signed to the 1950s record label, Baton Records. From 1956-1962 she scored three Top 40 hit singles before she stopped recording...

, but popularized by Muddy Waters

Muddy Waters

McKinley Morganfield , known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician, generally considered the "father of modern Chicago blues"...

 in 1957

1957 in music

-Events:*January 5 – Renato Carosone and his band start their American tour in Cuba.*January 6 – Elvis Presley makes his final appearance on the The Ed Sullivan Show.*January 16 – The Cavern Club opens in Liverpool, UK....

. Waters' rendition of the song was featured on the Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

magazine's list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time at #359 and was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000. It was also included in the list of Songs of the Century

Songs of the Century

The "Songs of the Century" list is part of an education project by the Recording Industry Association of America , the National Endowment for the Arts, and Scholastic Inc. that aims to "promote a better understanding of America’s musical and cultural heritage" in American schools...

, by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Covers

The song has been covered by many artists, including Louis Jordan

Louis Jordan

Louis Thomas Jordan was a pioneering American jazz, blues and rhythm & blues musician, songwriter and bandleader who enjoyed his greatest popularity from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as "The King of the Jukebox", Jordan was highly popular with both black and white audiences in the...

 (1956), Roy Head and the Traits

Roy Head

Roy Head is an American singer, best known for his hit "Treat Her Right."-Career:Head achieved fame as a member of a musical group out from San Marcos, Texas known as The Traits. The group's sponsor landed their first recording contract in 1958 with TNT Music in San Antonio, Texas while they were...

 (1962), Conway Twitty

Conway Twitty

Conway Twitty , born Harold Lloyd Jenkins, was an American country music artist. He also had success in early rock and roll, R&B, and pop music. He held the record for the most number one singles of any act with 55 No. 1 Billboard country hits until George Strait broke the record in 2006...

 (1964), Alexis Korner

Alexis Korner

Alexis Korner was a blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a Founding Father of British Blues"...

 (1964), Manfred Mann

Manfred Mann

Manfred Mann was a British beat, rhythm and blues and pop band of the 1960s, named after their South African keyboardist, Manfred Mann, who later led the successful 1970s group Manfred Mann's Earth Band...

 (1964), The Zombies

The Zombies

The Zombies are an English rock band, formed in 1961 in St Albans and led by Rod Argent, on piano and keyboards, and vocalist Colin Blunstone. The group scored a UK and US hit in 1964 with "She's Not There"...

 (1964), Jimmy Smith

Jimmy Smith (musician)

Jimmy Smith was a jazz musician whose performances on the Hammond B-3 electric organ helped to popularize this instrument...

 (1965), Graham Bond

Graham Bond

Graham John Clifton Bond was an English musician, considered a founding father of the English rhythm and blues boom of the 1960s....

 (1965), The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

Paul Butterfield

Paul Butterfield was an American blues vocalist and harmonica player, who founded the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in the early 1960s and performed at the original Woodstock Festival...

 (1965), Art Blakey

Art Blakey

Arthur "Art" Blakey , known later as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina, was an American Grammy Award-winning jazz drummer and bandleader. He was a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community....

 (1966), Carla Thomas

Carla Thomas

Carla Thomas is an American singer, who is often referred to as the Queen of Memphis Soul. She is the daughter of Rufus Thomas.-Childhood:...

 (1967), The Electric Prunes

The Electric Prunes

The Electric Prunes are an American rock band who first achieved international attention as an experimental psychedelic group in the late 1960s. Their song "Kyrie Eleison" was featured on the soundtrack of Easy Rider...

 (1967), Peps Persson & Blues Quality

Peps Persson

Peps Persson is a Swedish blues and reggae musician from Tjörnarp, Scania. Throughout his career he has mostly made music in Swedish and is well known for his Scanian dialect...

 (1968, later released in Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

 as Min trollmoj funkar), Canned Heat

Canned Heat

Canned Heat is a blues-rock/boogie rock band that formed in Los Angeles, California in 1965. The group has been noted for its own interpretations of blues material as well as for efforts to promote the interest in this type of music and its original artists...

 (1969), Melanie Safka

Melanie Safka

Melanie Anne Safka-Schekeryk is an American singer-songwriter. Known professionally as simply Melanie, she is best known for her hits "Brand New Key", "Ruby Tuesday" and "Lay Down ".-Early career:...

 (1970), Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley

Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

 (1970), Rory Gallagher

Rory Gallagher

William Rory Gallagher, ; 2 March 1948  – 14 June 1995, was an Irish blues-rock multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and bandleader. Born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, Ireland, and raised in Cork, Gallagher recorded solo albums throughout the 1970s and 1980s, after forming the band Taste...

 (1971), J. J. Cale (1972), B. B. King

B. B. King

Riley B. King , known by the stage name B.B. King, is an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter.Rolling Stone magazine ranked him at No.3 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. According to Edward M...

 (1977), Buddy Guy

Buddy Guy

George "Buddy" Guy is an American blues and jazz guitarist and singer. He is a critically acclaimed artist who has established himself as a pioneer of the Chicago blues sound, and has served as an influence to some of the most notable musicians of his generation...

 (1977), JB Hutto

JB Hutto

J. B. Hutto was an American blues musician. Hutto was influenced by Elmore James, and became known for his slide guitar work and declamatory style of singing...

 (1979), The Stampeders

The Stampeders

The Stampeders are a Canadian rock trio, consisting of Rich Dodson, Ronnie King, and Kim Berly.-Career:The band formed in Calgary, Alberta in 1964 as The Rebounds....

 (1979), Otis Rush

Otis Rush

Otis Rush is a blues musician, singer and guitarist. His distinctive guitar style features a slow burning sound and long bent notes...

 (1986), Asylum Street Spankers

Asylum Street Spankers

The Asylum Street Spankers, formed in Austin, Texas in 1994, was a band whose music was rooted in early 20th century American musical forms. In fall 2006, the band's anti-war satire video "Stick Magnetic Ribbons on Your SUV", directed by Morgan Higby Night garnered 1,054,743 views on YouTube within...

 (2004), Eric Clapton

Eric Clapton

Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE, is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and...

, and Johnny Winter

Johnny Winter

John Dawson "Johnny" Winter III is an American blues guitarist, singer, and producer. Best known for his late 1960s and 1970s high-energy blues-rock albums and live performances, Winter also produced three Grammy Award-winning albums for blues legend Muddy Waters...

 (2011).

Litigation

This song has been the topic of copyright

Copyright

Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...

 litigation. McKinley Morganfield, a.k.a. Muddy Waters, heard Ann Cole perform this song while on tour in 1956. He modified the words, and attempted to copyright his own version. Dare Records, holder of the Preston copyright, and Arc Records, holder of the Morganfield copyright, settled out of court, with Arc deferring to Dare's copyright. This agreement did not affect the actual copyright status: the two versions are still separately copyrighted. Nonetheless, MCA/Chess has credited the song to Foster in more recent years (for example, in the liner notes to the Chess Blues box set in 1991). Other songs exist that are sufficiently similar to have provoked litigation. In Strachborneo v. Arc Music 357 F. Supp 1393 (S.D. N.Y. 1973), Ruth Stratchborneo sued Arc Music, rights holder to the Preston Foster work, for infringement against her song "Mojo Workout". The court held that "MOJO is a commonplace part of the rhetoric of the culture of a substantial portion of the American people. As a figure of speech, the concept of having, or not having, one's MOJO working is not something in which any one person could assert originality, or establish a proprietary right.".

Lyric comparison in copyright case
Foster lyrics excerpt Got my Mojo working but it just won't work on you Got my Mojo working but it just won't work on you I want to love you so that I don't know what to do I got my black cat bones all pure and dry I got my 4 leaf clovers all hanging high I got my Mojo working but it just won't work on you I want to love you so till I don't know what to do black snake boots, red hot tips, etc. >	Excerpt from Waters lyrics Got my mojo working but it just won't work on you Got my mojo working but it just won't work on you I want to love you so bad I don't know what to do Going down to Louisiana to get me a mojo hand Going down to Louisiana to get me a mojo hand I'm going to have all you women, getcha under my command Got my mojo working, ...	Excerpt from Stratchborneo lyrics I got my mojo working Well my mojo working Well my mojo working Well my mojo working My mojo working but it just won't work on you. You grab your little girl and spin her around You grab both hands and holler out loud You turn and turn till you're back to back You move your feet and you don't look back. You do the mojo workout Well the mojo workout You do the mojo workout I got my mojo working Well my mojo working My mojo working.