Songfacts®:

• This song was written by the songwriting team of Jo Armstead, Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson. Recording as Valerie & Nick, Ashford and Simpson's biggest chart success was "I'll Find You," which hit #117 in 1964. Turning their focus to writing for other artists, they joined Scepter/Wand Records as staff songwriters, and had minor hits for Doris Troy ("Please Little Angel") and Maxine Brown ("One Step At A Time" - written with Armstead) before scoring their first Top-40 when Ray Charles recorded their song "Let's Go Get Stoned."
  
  After a fruitless day of writing, Ashford declared, "Let's go get stoned," meaning, "Let's go get a drink." The next day, they wrote a song based on that title, and it was recorded by both Ray Charles and The Coasters.
  
  Ray's version was the hit, going to #1 on the R&B charts and giving a huge boost to Ashford and Simpson, who would go on to write "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing" and "I'm Every Woman."
• Most listeners assumed that this song was about drugs, and with good reason: Ray Charles went to rehab in 1965 after 16 years of addiction. The song was really about drinking alcohol. There were several hits of the '60s and '70s that assigned alternate meanings to "stoned."
• This song's writers Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson had a hard time getting an audience with Berry Gordy at Motown Records, since after hearing this song, he didn't think their material would be classy enough for his acts. Ashford and Simpson won him over with "Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing," which became a hit duet for Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.
• This just had to be part of Woodstock, didn't it? Joe Cocker made it so, singing it as part of his set to open Day 3 of the festival.