Certain songs feel like theyāve always existed, to the point where itās strange to imagine them as beingĀ new, as being songs that people would hear on the radio for the first time. āHit The Road Jackā is one of those. As we experience it today, itās less aĀ song, more of an all-purpose signifier of the idea that someone should get out. Itās what plays over the PA at the hockey arena when someone get sent to the penalty box. But of course, before all that, it was a pop single.
Itās a slight song, less than two minutes. The setup is simple: The woman knows sheās stuck with someone who isnāt worth shit, and sheās kicking him out. The guy begs and pleads for another chance, but he knows itās hopeless. Theyāre following a script, and they know it. Maybe theyāve had this argument before. Maybe this really is the end. But the contours of it will always be familiar.
Charles isnāt the guy winning the argument, and heās not the star of the song, either. That would be Margie Hendrix, leader of the Raelettes, Charlesā trio of backup singers. She shows so much fire and personality on āHit The Road Jackā that it seems criminal that she was consigned to a backup singer role. But āHit The Road Jackā would be the peak of her career. She was in a relationship with Charles, and they were doing a lot of the same drugs, and maybe having fights not too different from the one outlined in the song. (The song isnāt about their fling, though. Charlesā friend Percy Mayfield, a onetime singer whose performing career ended after a disfiguring car accident, was the one who wrote the song.) A couple of years after āHit The Road Jack,ā Charles fired Hendrix. He survived his addictions, but she didnāt; she died in 1973.
Charles was a genius at straddling genre lines, and āHit The Road Jackā is a fine example. Itās an R&B song, but it pulls some of its swagger from big-band jazz, and some of its intensity from rock ānā roll. It sounds tough, and simple, but the sounds are there to get the story across. Itās not the work of transcendent genius that Charlesā āGeorgia On My Mindā was, but it remains plenty durable anyway.