A cover version of "Going Back to My Roots" by the British-American band Odyssey was the most successful in music charts in particularly European countries, besides reaching number one in South Africa.
Originally an album track discussing genealogy, the song was written for the African-American market and touches on the matters of self-identity, family, and soul fulfillment.
The song was written and first recorded by Lamont Dozier for his 1977 LP Peddlin' Music on the Side.
It was produced by Stewart Levine and features additional production from Hugh Masekela and Rik Pekkonen.
[1] It has widely been seen as covering the same subject matter as the bestselling Alex Haley novel Roots that depicts a modern-day African-American tracing his ancestry back, via the slave trade, to a village in The Gambia.
Yet in an interview with Blues & Soul magazine in 1977, Dozier stated otherwise: “The song was inspired by the fact that I have my ‘roots’ in Detroit and when I moved to Los Angeles, a few years ago, I found myself taking trips to Detroit to see my family and so on.” [2] An early cover version was recorded by Richie Havens in 1980.
[12] In 1989, a version was released by FPI Project, a trio consisting of Marco Fratty, Corrado Presti and Roberto Intrallazzi who, according to John Bush of AllMusic introduced Italo house to the world in the early 1990s.