“Reet Petite (Finest Girl You Ever Wanna Meet)” by Jackie Wilson

Jackie Wilson cut "Reet Petite" for Brunswick in 1957, his first recording as a solo artist after leaving the Dominoes and the first solo hit he ever had. Berry Gordy wrote it with Gwen Gordy Fuqua and Wilson's cousin Roquel "Billy" Davis, credited on the record as Tyran Carlo, and Dick Jacobs produced. The title nods to Louis Jordan's 1948 "Reet, Petite and Gone"; in jazz slang, "reet" meant fantastic.

In America it stalled at No. 62 on the Hot 100 in September 1957, but it made No. 6 in the UK, and its success gave Gordy the means to launch Motown Records. Then came the long tail: reissued in 1986 with a new claymation video, it went to number one in the UK at Christmas, nearly three years after Wilson died.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.