"Tighten Up" was a 1968 song by Houston, Texas based R&B
vocal group Archie Bell & the Drells. It reached #1 on both
the Billboard R&B and pop charts in the spring of 1968. It
is ranked #265 on the Rolling Stone magazine's list of "the 500
Greatest Songs of All Time" and is one of the earliest
funk hitsin music history.
"Tighten Up" was written by Archie Bell and Billy Buttier .
It was one of the first songs that Archie Bell & the Drells
recorded, in a session in 1967, along with a number of songs
including "She's My Woman". Soon afterwards Bell was drafted
into the U.S. Army and began serving in Vietnam. The song
became a hit in Houston, and was picked up by Atlantic Records
for distribution in April 1968. By the summer it topped both
the Billboard R&B and pop charts. It also sold a million
copies by May 1968, gaining an R.I.A.A. gold disc. The line in
"Tighten Up", "we dance just as good as we walk" was a little
ironic, given that Bell had been shot in the leg and was
consigned to a military hospital bed at the time.
The introduction features Bell introducing himself as being
from Houston, Texas. According to the Billboard Book of Number
One Hits by Fred Bronson, Bell heard a comment after the
Kennedy assassination in Dallas, that "nothing good ever came
out of Texas." Bell wanted his listeners to know "we were from
Texas and we were good."
The song described an accompanying dance that the band had
invented, also called the "Tighten Up"; this dance became
popular concurrently with the song.
The phenomenal success of the single prompted the band to
rush out an album, despite their incapacitated leader. In 1969
the group recorded their first full album with Gamble and Huff,
I Can't Stop Dancing, which reached number 28 on the
R&B chart.