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Dancing in the Street was written in 1964 by Marvin Gaye, William Mickey Stevenson and Ivy Jo Hunter. Gaye first recorded it as a smooth, intimate love song, but Martha Reeves heard a Mardi Gras block party and asked to sing it her way. Martha and the Vandellas cut it in two takes with the Funk Brothers, while Hunter supplied percussion by hitting a tire iron with a hammer. The song reached No. 2 in the U.S. in 1964, and in the mid-1960s urban minority communities heard its call to fill the streets as a political statement, though the writers said it was a dance song. The Rolling Stones answered it in 1968 with a track about street fighting.

Covers pulled the song in every direction. The Kinks rushed a 1965 version that critics called colorless, Swedish band Tages swapped the horns for organ and distorted guitar in 1966, and the Mamas and the Papas added Halifax, Nova Scotia, for Denny Doherty. The Grateful Dead stretched it into 15 to 20 minute jams from 1966 and cut a studio take in 1977, and Van Halen’s 1982 Diver Down version went top 40. For Live Aid in 1985, a satellite duet between David Bowie in London and Mick Jagger in Philadelphia was scrapped over delay, so they recorded at Abbey Road and shot a video in London’s Docklands the same night. It hit No. 1 in the UK and is often voted the worst music video ever.

• Phil Lesh said it was the first pop song the Grateful Dead stretched into a long improvised jam.
• The Kinks’ straight rock timing flattened the Funk Brothers’ syncopated groove.
• Producers on the Bowie and Jagger session said the rehearsal sounded like a bad lounge act, and Jagger arrived an hour late.
• Bowie loved the video and played it for his band in the studio to make them laugh.
• The original entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999 and the National Recording Registry in 2006.