Song #27: "See See Rider" by Eric Burdon & the Animals

 

#27: “See See Rider” — Eric Burdon & the Animals (1966)

Today’s Song

Eric Burdon & the Animals — “See See Rider” (1966)

Chart performance

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #10
Billboard chart run: 85–53–37–19–14–10–10–16–23–45
Canada: #1
UK: Not released as the A-side; B-side of “Help Me Girl”
Yearly rank: #116
Weeks charted: 10
Weeks Top 20: 4
Weeks Top 10: 2
Weeks at peak: 2

The Animals / Eric Burdon & the Animals at this point

Charting record: 11th of 19
Top-20 hit: 6th of 10
Top-10 hit: 2nd of 3
#1 pop hit: Not a #1; 1 eventual career #1
Previous Top-20: “Don’t Bring Me Down”
Next Top-20: “When I Was Young”

Retrospective standing

GOAT overall: #5,136
Among The Animals / Eric Burdon & the Animals songs: #2 of 19
Among their Top-20 hits: #2 of 10
GOAT points: 168,130

Record details

Entered chart: September 17, 1966
Released: August 1966
Recorded: Spring 1966
Single: “See See Rider” / “She’ll Return It”
Album: Animalization
Songwriter: Ma Rainey; based on a traditional blues song; arranged by Dave Rowberry
Lead vocal: Eric Burdon
Running time: 2:46 on the original MGM label; approximately 2:50 on the digital mono single edit
Label: MGM
Catalog number: K 13582
Recording to use: Original 1966 MGM mono single edit

Listen / watch / read

🎧 Original recording: Use the mono single edit, approximately 2:50, rather than the more common 4:02 stereo version.

📺 Contemporary performance: A 1967 Beat-Club performance survives.

📝 Lyrics: The Animals’ version uses only part of the constantly changing lyric tradition associated with the blues standard.

Versions & title history

Original or cover: Traditional blues standard / cover

Ma Rainey — “See See Rider Blues” (1924): One of the earliest and most important recorded versions.

Chuck Willis — “C.C. Rider” (1957): Major R&B interpretation and an important step toward later pop/R&B treatments.

LaVern Baker — “See See Rider” (1962): Musically the closest major pre-Animals version we heard, although no direct source establishes it as the Animals’ specific model.

Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels — “Jenny Take a Ride!” (1965): Incorporates “C.C. Rider” into a medley; separately eligible for this project.

Elvis Presley: Later made “See See Rider” a regular concert-opening number.

Same-title unrelated chart hits: None identified

Streaming note

The principal streaming version is generally the approximately 4:02 stereo recording, not the hit single edit. For the project, use the approximately 2:50 mono single edit corresponding to the 1966 MGM 45.

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A Surprisingly Big Animals Hit

The first surprise of “See See Rider” came before I even listened to it.

It peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. That puts it in some pretty rare company for the Animals: only “House of the Rising Sun,” which reached No. 1, and “San Franciscan Nights,” which reached No. 9, climbed higher.

I would not have guessed that.

If you had asked me to name the biggest Animals songs, I would have gone through quite a few before getting to “See See Rider”: “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” “Don’t Bring Me Down,” “It’s My Life,” “When I Was Young,” “San Franciscan Nights,” maybe even “Sky Pilot.” Those are the Animals songs that loom larger in my mind. “See See Rider” is not one of them.

History seems to have reached a similar conclusion. On Spotify’s The Animals Retrospective, “See See Rider” ranks 19th out of 22 tracks in streams, behind several album cuts I had never even heard of. And the Animals don't even seem to own “See See Rider” retrospectively. Search for the song on Spotify and versions by LaVern Baker and Elvis Presley appear before theirs.

So this is a No. 10 hit that has been overshadowed in two directions: by other songs in the Animals catalog and by other artists’ versions of “See See Rider.” It was unquestionably a substantial American hit in 1966, but today it is neither a definitive Animals song nor the definitive version of “See See Rider.”

And 1966 was a particularly strange moment to have an Animals hit.

By the time “See See Rider” reached the Top 10, the Animals who recorded it no longer existed as a band.

The Animals Fall Apart

The original Animals had already begun coming apart. Keyboardist Alan Price left in 1965 and was replaced by Dave Rowberry. Drummer John Steel followed in early 1966 and was replaced by Barry Jenkins. That left Eric Burdon, Hilton Valentine and Chas Chandler from the original five, along with Rowberry and Jenkins.

That lineup recorded “See See Rider” in the spring of 1966.

By then, the pace the Animals had been keeping was ridiculous. Alan Price later summarized his brief run with the group: in roughly 15 months, the Animals had completed three American tours, made two hit albums and released four hit singles.

Chas Chandler later estimated that the Animals were playing something like 300 shows a year. The surviving itineraries make that number easier to believe.

In July 1966, on one of the final North American tours by this incarnation of the Animals, the band played almost every day across the United States and Canada. On some days, they played two different cities.

And they apparently began that tour already knowing the band was finished. They still had commitments to fulfill, so they fulfilled them.

That is the context in which “See See Rider” became a hit.

MGM released the single in the United States in August 1966. Curiously, it was already credited to Eric Burdon and the Animals, rather than simply the Animals.

The old group broke up in September.

On September 17, “See See Rider” entered the Hot 100 at No. 85.

Eric Burdon and...What Animals?

One week later, Burdon gave an interview about putting together his next band. He hadn’t decided what to call it. More strikingly, he addressed one proposed name directly. People were talking about calling the new group Eric Burdon and the Animals, but Burdon thought that would be “stupid” because anyone could see that it wasn’t the Animals.

For a while, the billing reflected that uncertainty. The replacement group appeared as the New Animals and, at times, Eric Burdon and the New Animals.

Meanwhile, “See See Rider” kept climbing the American chart.

By October, it was No. 10.

So “See See Rider” became a Top-10 hit only after the Animals who recorded it had ceased to be a band—and it reached the Top 10 while Eric Burdon was already touring with their replacements under a different name.

Eventually the new group settled on Eric Burdon and the Animals after all.

There’s no evidence I’ve found of a meeting in which MGM or management ordered Burdon to keep the Animals name, so I don’t want to invent one. But the eventual name looks almost like a compromise between two obvious realities. The Animals name still had considerable commercial value. At the same time, Burdon himself had publicly acknowledged that his new musicians weren’t really the Animals.

Whatever the reason, Burdon doesn’t seem to have been fighting to salvage the old band. Price and Steel had already left. Chandler was ready to get off the road and move into management and production—and he had quite a next act waiting for him. Within weeks of the Animals breaking up, Chandler brought a little-known American guitarist named Jimi Hendrix to England and became his manager and producer. Valentine and Rowberry also departed. Burdon moved forward with Jenkins and an otherwise new lineup.

And the new band would increasingly move somewhere else musically. Burdon was becoming interested in psychedelia and the emerging San Francisco counterculture. Records such as “When I Was Young,” “San Franciscan Nights” and “Monterey” were ahead.

“See See Rider” belonged to what had come before.

A Blues Standard Keeps Changing

And the song itself belonged to something much older.

Ma Rainey recorded “See See Rider Blues” in 1924, although the song had already circulated before she recorded it. Over the following decades, it became one of those blues standards whose identity was less a fixed recording than a collection of familiar lyrics and musical ideas that performers could rearrange.

That made it perfectly logical material for the Animals. Animalisms—reconfigured in the United States as Animalization—was filled with American blues, R&B and rock songs. “I Put a Spell on You,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Gin House Blues” and “One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show” all appeared alongside originals. Recording “See See Rider” didn't require some special explanation. It was a standard, and this was a band that regularly recorded standards.

Listening backward through a few of those earlier versions also demonstrated just how flexible the song was.

Ma Rainey’s recording barely sounds like the same song to me. I can hear the connection when she gets to “See See Rider, see what you have done,” but otherwise it is difficult to draw a straight musical line from her 1924 recording to the Animals.

Chuck Willis’s 1957 version sounds considerably more recognizable as a predecessor—and, unexpectedly, prominently features a marimba.

LaVern Baker’s 1962 version sounds closest to the Animals to my ears. I don’t have any evidence that the Animals specifically based their arrangement on Baker’s, so I wouldn’t go further than that. But listening to the two, they clearly inhabit a much more similar musical neighborhood.

Baker’s version also made me notice something else.

I could follow the story.

Her version contains lyrics about getting a shotgun and gives the song a clearer sense of narrative progression. The Animals drop that material. Their collection of verses never grabbed me as a story at all.

Even the title is murky. “Rider” was established blues slang for a lover or sexual partner. The origin of “See See” or “C.C.” is much less certain and has accumulated several competing explanations over the years.

I’m not convinced solving that mystery would tell me much about the Animals record anyway.

The lyrics don't seem to be driving it.

The Animals Take

Their “See See Rider” sounds more like a band settling into a familiar song and playing. Burdon gives it his usual bluesy vocal. Rowberry’s organ is pushed prominently forward, running through the record in a circular pattern. The guitar gets room to stretch out.

Everybody sounds comfortable.

Maybe that's part of my problem with it.

The Animals sound like they could roll out of bed and play this particular song. It feels almost like the kind of number a garage blues band could use to warm up: everybody knows where it goes, everybody gets to play, and nobody has to think too hard about it.

The longer stereo version strengthens that impression.

The actual American hit was the short mono single edit. The MGM label lists it at 2:46; the digital mono version I found runs about 2:50. Spotify doesn't make it especially easy to find. A normal search tends to surface the approximately 4:02 stereo album version instead.

I actually prefer the sound of the stereo version. The organ is crisper and the whole record has more space.

But the extra minute doesn't contain some revelation that the single edit removed. The band mostly keeps going. There’s more of the circular organ figure, more playing and another verse. It feels increasingly like a jam session.

For a single, cutting it down made sense.

American listeners apparently agreed with the result. Contemporary reviews treated the record as an effective new Animals single. Cash Box called it an “excellent re-working” and praised its hard-driving approach. It quickly received substantial radio exposure.

America Gets “See See Rider,” Britain Doesn't

There was no comparable British chart run because Britain got a different single.

In the United States, MGM put “See See Rider” on the A-side. In Britain, Decca released “Help Me Girl” as the A-side and put “See See Rider” on the back. “Help Me Girl” reached No. 14 in Britain.

A contemporary British review even noted that “See See Rider” was already getting attention in the United States and suggested either side could have been a hit.

So saying that “See See Rider” failed to chart in Britain is technically true but misleading. British record buyers were never really asked to make it a hit.

My Take

As for me, spending a day with it didn't change my opinion very much.

The Animals songs I love are dark. They brood.

“See See Rider” doesn't.

It's brighter and looser. At one point while listening, I thought it sounded like background music at a swinging Hollywood party in the mid-1960s. Nobody is necessarily listening closely to it. It just keeps the room moving.

That's not a fatal criticism. There's nothing objectionable about “See See Rider.” Burdon sings it well. The band plays it well. I like the organ. Nothing annoys me enough to want to turn it off.

It’s competent in an unremarkable way.

But if I were putting together an Animals playlist, this might not make it. There are simply too many Animals records I'd rather hear.

And if “See See Rider” came on the radio, I wouldn't reach for the dial.

I'd probably just start wondering what song was coming next.

40/100.

It’s OK. Not great. Not bad. Not an All-Star.