Daddy's Home (Shep and the Limelites song)

"Daddy's Home" is a famous song by American doo-wop group Shep and the Limelites. The song was written by the three members of the band, James "Shep" Sheppard (1935–1970), Clarence Bassett (1936–2005) and Charles Baskerville. The group recorded the original version of "Daddy's Home" on February 1, 1961 and it was released on Hull Records in March 1961 with the B-side being "This I Know".

"Daddy's Home" reached no. 2 on the Billboard popular music chart in May 1961,.

Later songs by the band were not as successful as "Daddy's Home", but still sold well.

Part of a song cycle

The song is an example of James Sheppard's legacy of composing of rock 'n' roll's first ever song cycle titles, telling the story of a relationship, beginning with going home to his girl, and further twists along the way, like getting married, celebrating their anniversary, problems encountered etc. The songs that told this story cycle were famously "A Thousand Miles Away", "500 Miles to Go", both with the Heartbeats; and continued with "Daddy's Home", "Three Steps from the Altar," "Our Anniversary", and "What Did Daddy Do?" for Shep and the Limelites.

Controversy

Kahl Music, publisher of "A Thousand Miles Away", an earlier song written by Sheppard, sued Keel Music, publisher of "Daddy's Home", for copyright violation. Keel eventually lost, and this resulted in the end of the Limelites and Hull Records in 1966 as a fall-off of the controversy.

Covers

The song was covered by many artists including P J Proby (1970), Jermaine Jackson (1972), Toots and the Maytals (Funky Kingston 1973), Junior English, and Cliff Richard (1981).

Jermaine Jackson

Jermaine Jackson covered a very successful version with the Jackson 5 as backing vocals to him.

Cliff Richard version

The British singer Cliff Richard recorded his own version that was included in Cliff Richard's album Wired for Sound. This version became an international hit for him reaching number 2 on the UK Singles Chart in 1981 and number 3 on the Irish Singles Chart and number 23 on Billboard Hot 100 in the States almost twenty years after the release of the original by Shep and the Limelites. Cliff Richard version was a "live" performance with elaborate stage presentation depicting the story of the story.

His version also made it to number 8 in Australian ARIA charts, number 4 on New Zealand charts, number 8 on Ultratop, the Belgian Singles Chart, number 14 in the Netherlands amongst others.