Evil Ways
by Santana
- 117
- BPM
- F major
- Key
- 7B
- Camelot
- 71
- Danceability
- 74
- Acousticness
"Evil Ways" was on Santana's 1969 debut album, Santana, and came out as a single in late 1969. By the week of March 21, 1970, it had climbed to number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the band's first Top 40 hit in the United States.
The song was not theirs to begin with. Clarence "Sonny" Henry wrote it, and the jazz percussionist Willie Bobo recorded it first, on his 1967 album Bobo Motion. Santana's version put Gregg Rolie on lead vocals, and he also plays the Hammond organ solo in the middle section. The coda runs at double time and carries a guitar solo by Carlos Santana, who also sings backing vocals.
The first pressings of the debut album and the single credited the wrong writer. They named Jimmie Zack, a minor rockabilly artist from the Midwest who had recorded a different song with the same title in 1960, as Jimmie Zack and the Blues Rockers. Johnny Mathis released the song as a single in 1970, and it reached number 118 on the Cash Box survey.
Evil Ways runs at 117 BPM, the tempo of pop, funk and disco-leaning dance. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.05 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 513 ms. It is in F major, Camelot 7B, which shares its notes with D minor and mixes cleanly with Bb major and C major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.