But It's Alright

This highly danceable soul number has a surprising vindictive lyric, with J.J. Jackson taking a girl to task for treating him bad and promising that she's get her comeuppance when some other guy does the same to her. "you gotta gotta reap what you sow," he sings, quoting Galatians 6 in the Bible: "A man reaps what he sows."

J.J. Jackson was an American soul singer (born in Arkansas), but he traveled to England to record "But It's Alright." He had been working Stateside as a songwriter/arranger when his manager sent him to England, where he recorded the song. He wrote it with a British songwriter named Pierre Tubbs, who later had a hit with "Right Back Where We Started From," recorded by Maxine Nightingale.

This song endures on soul and oldies playlists, but it wasn't a big hit when it was first released, charting in America at #22 when it was released on the Calla label. Jackson never had another substantial hit, but after Warner Bros. bought Calla, they re-issued "But It's Alright" in 1969 and it charted again, this time at #45.