Buffalo Boy's Blog

An underrated song over the years that has been covered by numerous artists including The Ramones and The Beach Boys. It was originally recorded in 1958 by Bobby Freeman who had Jerry Garcia record the guitar tracks for the original version.

Do You Wanna Dance? was also the highest charting song peaking at #12 on the charts to feature Dennis Wilson on lead vocals. To this day Dennis Wilson to me was the most under appreciated Beach Boy and underrated drummers of his time and maybe rivaled Brian Wilson in musical ability/talent.

The Bobby Freeman Version:

The Beach Boys, my favorite version released in 1965:

The Ramones version released in 1977:

These were not the only versions of this song, it was also covered by Bette Midler, Eddie Cochran, The Mamas and the Papas sampled a piece of the song in their song "Maple Leaves", Johnny Rivers, John Lennon, T. Rex, Ray Stevens, Neil Young would cover it live in the early 80's and there were other versions floating around as well by lesser known artists.