Chain Gang (1955 song)

[1] The song was Scott's first pop single; the teenage musician had already backed Louis Prima and Gene Krupa as a jazz pianist.

[2] Gordon Whitey Mitchell, who played alongside Scott in the Gene Krupa Quartet, remembered him practicing his singing on tour "affecting a 'black' sound", and described "Chain Gang" as featuring "that same fake voice".

[10] Jimmy Young's version of "Chain Gang", recorded with Bob Sharples and His Music, was released as a single in the United Kingdom in March 1956.

: The Story of Modern Pop, British musician and journalist Bob Stanley described Young's "Chain Gang" as "just plain weird", citing the "caterwauling brass, whipcrack snare, moaning convicts" of the backing and spotlighting the song's climax in which "it trips out into proto-dub, Young's voice echoing into a void of tape delay and lonesome stand-up bass, oblique, dissolving".

Stanley notes that the vocal production on "Chain Gang" bears similarities to that on "Heartbreak Hotel" but predates the Elvis Presley record's UK release.