Songfacts®:

• In one of his biggest hits, Dobie Gray sings about the perks of being a member of a popular crowd in the swinging '60s and shows the high school clique mentality is not a new phenomenon. He boasts that he knows all the latest dances and the hottest spots, he speaks a cool language that only the elite will understand, and he gets respect when he walks down the street. Near the end of the song, we learn he's trying to get a girl to go out with him based on his popular status.
• Written by Billy Page, this was often mistaken for a Motown number thanks to Page's brother, Gene Page, who infused the arrangement with a lively orchestration, including a full brass section. Indeed, Gene was known for working his magic on many Motown hits for acts like The Supremes and The Temptations.
• Also in 1964, the Ramsey Lewis Trio recorded a live instrumental version at Bohemian Caverns, a Washington, D.C. nightclub. The jazzy cover peaked at #5 on the US pop chart.
• Bryan Ferry recorded a hit version (#13 UK) for his 1974 album Another Time, Another Place.
• This was featured in the 1995 Martin Scorsese drama Casino. It was also included in the 1988 musical drama The In Crowd, starring Donovan Leitch Jr. and Joe Pantoliano.
• Cheap Trick covered this in 2016 for their Bang, Zoom, Crazy... Hello album. Bassist Tom Petersson explained to Uncut: "We used to play to play it in clubs. We were doing it a few years ago in soundchecks, I think I started playing it and it all went from there. Someone came up to us and said, 'Oh my God, that's great!' So this time I said, 'Why don't we do this song?'"