"Jim Dandy" is a song written by Lincoln Chase

Lincoln Chase

Lincoln R. Chase was an African-American songwriter and occasional recording artist. As a writer, his most notable songs were "Such a Night", "Jim Dandy", and several of Shirley Ellis' hits in the early 1960s including "The Name Game" and "The Clapping Song".-Career:He studied at the American...

, and was first recorded by American R&B

Rhythm and blues

Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...

 singer LaVern Baker

LaVern Baker

LaVern Baker was an American rhythm and blues singer, who had several hit records on the pop chart in the 1950s and early 1960s. Her most successful records were "Tweedlee Dee" , "Jim Dandy" , and "I Cried a Tear" .-Early life:She was born Delores LaVern Baker in Chicago, Illinois...

 in 1956. It reached the top of the R&B

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, is a chart released weekly by Billboard in the United States.The chart, initiated in 1942, is used to track the success of popular music songs in urban, or primarily African American, venues. Dominated over the years at various times by jazz, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, soul,...

 chart and #17 on the pop

Billboard Hot 100

The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...

 charts in the U.S. It was named one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll and was ranked #343 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

The song is about a man (Jim Dandy) who rescues women from improbable or impossible predicaments. It proved popular enough that Chase wrote a second song for Baker entitled "Jim Dandy Got Married.".

Black Oak Arkansas cover

The song was covered by southern rock

Southern rock

Southern rock is a subgenre of rock music, and genre of Americana. It developed in the Southern United States from rock and roll, country music, and blues, and is focused generally on electric guitar and vocals...

 band Black Oak Arkansas

Black Oak Arkansas

Black Oak Arkansas is an American Southern rock band named after the band's hometown of Black Oak, Arkansas. The band reached the height of its fame in the 1970s with ten charting albums released in that decade...

. It hit #25 on the pop chart and featured Jim "Dandy" Mangrum

Jim "Dandy" Mangrum

James Mangrum, better known as Jim "Dandy" Mangrum , is the lead singer and frontman for the American Southern rock band Black Oak Arkansas. He is noted for his raspy voice, long hair, and wild, sexually-explicit stage antics which sometimes included miming sex with a washboard which he often uses...

 and female vocalist Ruby Starr

Ruby Starr

Ruby Starr was born Constance Henrietta Mierzwiak in Toledo, Ohio. Starr started performing at the age of nine under the stage name Connie Little and later joined Ruby Jones in 1969. In 1971 they were signed to Curtom Records and recorded their first album, Ruby Jones...

 trading off vocals. It was the first single from their 1973 album High on the Hog

High on the Hog (Black Oak Arkansas album)

High on the Hog is the most commercially successful album by the southern rock band Black Oak Arkansas. It is mainly known for its cover of the LaVern Baker song "Jim Dandy", which reached number 25 on the Billboard Hot 100...

, Black Oak's most commercially successful album.

In the early to mid 2000's, a used car lot called "JD Byrider" produced a version replacing "Jim Dandy" with "JD" to advertise that they would "rescue" buyers with bad credit.