Songfacts®:

• Otis & Carla are Otis Redding and Carla Thomas, who were both recording artists for the Stax label and frequent duet partners. Thomas is best known for the song "Gee Whiz." Her father is Rufus Thomas of "Walking The Dog" fame.
• The song was first recorded and released by the Blues singer Lowell Fulson in 1967. The song was written by Fulson along with Jimmy McCracklin and Susan L. Yasinski.
• The King & Queen album of duets which featured "Tramp" was the last album released by Redding before his death. Tennessee Senator Howard H. Baker, Jr. wrote the album's liner notes.
• Carla Thomas' good-natured ribbing, "you straight from the Georgia woods," references Redding's home state. Like Ray Charles' "Hit The Road Jack," "Tramp" is part of a 1950s-1960s tradition of insult songs where a woman tells her man exactly how he feels, often in the form of a duet. Other examples include Big Mama Thornton's version of "Hound Dog" and Etta James' "My Man is a Watch Dog."
• "Tramp" and the other duets between Otis Redding and Carla Thomas were a few of a number of duets Stax recorded during the 1960s. "Duets have always been an integral part of the history of soul music," Stax historian Rob Bowman in his liner notes for Boy Meets Girl, a collection of 1960s era duets. Otis Redding mentioned in an interview that the duets between him and Thomas were inspired by those recorded by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell at Motown.