Work Song is a jazz standard composed by American trumpeter Nat Adderley with lyrics later added by Oscar Brown Jr. It first appeared as the title track on Nat Adderley's 1960 album Work Song. The piece began as an instrumental, and Brown Jr. added lyrics for a 1961 cover on Sin & Soul. The tune is a 16-bar minor blues in F minor with a funky blues feel that has made it a classic in jazz and soul-jazz circles. The inspiration came from Adderley’s childhood memory of a Florida chain gang, where convicts sang as they worked, and the track is often cited as a key work in the mid-1960s soul-jazz style associated with the Adderley brothers. It remains one of Nat Adderley’s best known compositions.
