So many of those mostly-forgotten "minor" R&B hits Jerry mentions, singles that sold only within a small geographical region and/or only to the "race records" market, actually enjoyed wider exposure to white teenagers in England than here at home in the states.

I'm not sure why ~ I suppose that when recordings of strange new sounds come to the shores of Liverpool in sailors' duffel bags, no one asked which record was a hit and which wasn't, nor even which side of a given record was supposed to be the "A" side and which the "B." Kids listened and judged each song on its own merits, and the upshot was that the Beatles and Stones and many other less-well-known rock groups wound up "covering" American recordings that never got much airplay back home in the states, and no exposure at all the the "mainstream" US Causcasian market.

I recently heard several different made-in-New-Orleans renditions of an old R&B hit, "Anna (Go With Him)" on WWOZ-FM. Since it had been recorded by several New Orelans artists, at the legendary local J&M Studios, I assumed it was written here, too, but I was wrong.

What I learned from the Internet: (1) the song sounded so familiar to me probably because it was also recorded by the Beatles, and (2) it was written and first recorded by one Arthur Alexander of Florence, Alabama.

Alexander has the wonderful trivia-question distinction of being the only songwriter to have his word recorded by Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He was also the first artist to record at the soon-to-become-legendary F.A.M.E. studions in Muscle Shoals, AL.

Familiar titles of some of his compositions besides "Anna":
"You Better Move On" (covered by the Stones)
"Sally Sue Brown" (Dylan and Elvis)
"Every Day I Have to Cry Some"
"A Shot of Rhythm and Blues"
"Go Home Girl"

Alexander also is credited as being the first lyricist to use the word "girl" as direct-address (as "I wanna tell you, girl...), a usage that was immediately taken up by many other writers, notably John Lennon.