In 1966 I sat in and sang with a three piece band playing weekends in a low-down bar in a
sleazy section of Grand Rapids, Michigan. They liked my voice and asked me to join them.
Since the bar owner wouldn’t pay any more, they all took a cut in pay so I could get ten
dollars a night!! This was my very first gig. There was a friend of the guitar player who came
in quite frequently who was an outstanding guitar player himself and he had a band called
“The I Can’t Say.” He really liked my voice and said I should make a record. I liked the idea
and had written a few songs, although I didn’t write “Born To Wander” until several weeks
I distinctly remember writing “Born To Wander” at my kitchen table on a Sunday afternoon
while living in a microscopic, two-room apartment in a rundown part of the city. It took me
maybe twenty minutes at the most. I immediately saw the potential in the song and a few
days later rehearsed it for a couple hours with “The I Can’t Say.” I found two black girls for
backup vocals and, again, spent no more than a couple hours rehearsing with them. I then
booked a three hour session for a Sunday afternoon in a recording studio (analog, of course)
set up in an abandoned movie theater in the tiny village of Sparta, about ten miles from
Grand Rapids. I knew an excellent saxophone player who played in various bands around
town and he agreed to play baritone sax on the session. I thought tympani drums would
add drama to the record so the Friday before the session I called the band teacher at the
Sparta High School and asked if he had a tympani player. He said he did and agreed to send
him to the recording studio Sunday. We recorded “Born To Wander” in a couple hours and,
just to make it a record, also recorded “So Sad”, a song my 14-year-old brother had written,
for the “B” side. I paid the band and the backup singers twenty five dollars each and ten
dollars to the tympani player. The entire session, including studio time and 50 records, cost
me two hundred and fifty dollars which I borrowed from a friend. It took me several years
The record got a couple weeks of air time on a local AM radio station and I handed out a
few copies to customers in the different bars I was playing in and to several girlfriends. And
that was it! Nothing further happened to it for almost fifty years.
Fast forward now to the spring of 2015. I got a call one day from a local record collector
who had bought a copy of “Born To Wander” at a garage sale and wanted to know if I would
autograph it. I was blown away because I didn’t think anybody knew about it and I had
pretty much forgotten about it myself. I met with him and autographed the record then
went home that night and told my girlfriend about the amazing thing that had just
happened. She had her laptop connected to the internet, googled the song and it came up
on YouTube! Someone had uploaded it back in 2009 and it had received over seventeen
hundred views. I couldn’t believe it. I found out later that the record and been circulating
among collectors for a long time and the few copies that were available were often selling
for $1,500 to $2,000 dollars!
Since I owned all the rights to the song, I thought I might be able to sell a few and so I had
a new pressing done of five hundred copies. Just to be safe, I also reinstated the copyright
and registered it with BMI. After I set up a website, I got a few orders right away from
collectors, mostly in Europe and the UK. One of the people who ordered the record was Ben
Blackwell, an avid record collector who I found out later is the head man at Jack White’s
Third Man Records in Nashville, Tennessee. Of course, I didn’t have a clue who he was at
that time and sent him his autographed copy which I’m sure amused him to no end. Less
than a month later I received a call from BBDO in New York City, one of the world’s largest
advertising agencies. They said they were working on a new Bacardi commercial and
wondered if I would be interested in licensing “Born To Wander” for the music. Of course I
said “Yes” and a couple days later I received and signed the contracts. I had no idea how big
and extensive the Bacardi commercial was going to be. It turned out they were planning to
spend millions on a massive new advertising campaign to appeal to a younger audience and
my song was about to be broadcast hundreds and hundreds of times on late nite TV, ESPN,
Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brian, Spike, UFC, Comedy Central, etc., etc. Once again I was in
BBDO sent me a rough draft of the commercial right away and, remembering that he had a
connection with some record company (I didn’t even know about Third Man Records at that
time), I sent it to Ben Blackwell and asked what he thought of it. He immediately got back
to me and wanted to know if I would consider placing the song with Third Man Records.
Another shock! At this point I finally figured out who he was and who Third Man Records
were. They are a great and respected company specializing in vinyl and offering a wide
variety of music that mainstream Nashville won’t touch. Definitely my kind of people. We
agreed that they would handle the digital downloads and release Born To Wander as a new
vinyl 45 on the Third Man label. About a month later I found myself at Third Man Records
talking with Jack White himself and getting the royal treatment from Ben Blackwell. Jack
actually said he was “honored” that I had chosen Third Man to handle my song!! Of course, I
told him the honor was all mine. He is a very sincere, non-phoney, unaffected man whom
you would never guess is a multimillionaire, world famous rock star if you didn’t know that
The Bacardi commercial began broadcasting October 20, 2015. Four weeks later there
were nearly 15,000 views of “Born To Wander” on YouTube and it was being seen by
millions of people all over the United States on all the major TV outlets. It became one of
the most downloaded songs on iTunes and people from all over the world were ordering
their own vinyl copy from the website jackwoodborntowander.com.
It’s been a wild and highly gratifying journey for me. “Born To Wander” is a record that
just refused to die and it waited nearly 50 years for the world to discover it. It has been the
impetus for a much-welcomed revival in my music career. The tremendous response it has
received has made the music business take notice that there is a vast audience for music
that defies the bland, cookie cutter drivel that is being spoon-fed to audiences around the
world by an often cynical and jaded industry.
Long live “real” music and long live “Born To Wander."
Jack Wood
Grand Rapids, Michigan
November 7, 2015
"The chairs are too nice, the chandeliers are too beautiful, and the popcorn is too buttery." - Jack White
"What if my problem wasn't that I don't understand people but that I don't like them?" - Louis Bloom