The 1950's UK singer who hit the charts with a clappety clap version was Lonnie Donegan , Joe pointed out. I hadn't realized that the song had been originally popularized in America this way . Another example of black American music becoming broadly popular in the US after being performed by white UK artists.

I remember hearing a floor singer get carried away singing it in an Irish pub in Hackney in the early eighties. He'd been improvising all the "itty bitty babies" and "you and me brother" bits trying to sound soulful,but he'd obviously been practicing James Brown in front of a mirror too long . By the time he'd come out with the chorus for the fifth time he was so fired up he didn't know what he was singing : "he's got the whole of it , the whole world , man , yeah, he's got whole of it, the whole whole f...ing world in his hands.