Songfacts®:

• William Bell's debut single, this was released by Stax Records in 1961. It is Bell's signature song and acknowledged as a Southern soul classic.
• The song is about a lost love. When William Bell wrote it, he had found a niche as the featured vocalist with Phineas Newborn's orchestra. However he was feeling homesick and missing his loved ones back home in Memphis. Bell recalled to Mojo:
  
  "I was on the road and feeding lonesome for my girlfriend and all that stuff. I was in New York we happened to be off that night, and there was a thunderstorm. I wrote the song then. When I came back to Memphis at the end of the summer, Chips (Monan, producer) asked me about doing a solo project and that was one of the songs I had."
• The song is much covered. Among the well-known versions are ones by Otis Redding for his 1965 album, Otis Blue and The Byrds for their 1968 record, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, with lead vocals sung by guitarist Roger McGuinn.
• Booker T. & the MG's had not yet formed as the house band of Stax Records, but some of their future members played on this track. Other musicians included drummer Howard Grimes and pianist Marvell Thomas.
  
  "The MG's had not really grouped at the time, but I believe we did bring Booker T in to do the organ parts," Bell recalled to Uncut magazine in 2022. "Marvell did the keyboards, a guy named Lewis Steinberg was the bass player there and Steve Cropper was still there. Chips Moman produced it. Those were the elements and we worked it up and cut it. When we started working with it in the studio, it didn't change very much. The instrumentation on it and the intro, it was pretty much the way I had done it. Marvell was instrumental in creating the piano licks, pretty much as we had envisaged it."