Watch: Muhammad Ali not boxing, but actually singing from his own album

Muhammad Ali... singer. That doesn’t sound quite right, does it?

But he was in fact a man of some musical talent too. In 1963, a year before his famous heavyweight championship victory over Sonny Liston, he put out an album titled, quite definitively and prophetically, I Am The Greatest! At this time he hadn’t converted to Islam, and still used his birth name, Cassius Clay.

The album, largely a compilation of poems about himself set to music, had two songs which revealed the boxer’s faith in his own vocal talent. These are earnest covers of Ben E King’s Stand By Me and, with his friend, singer Sam Cooke, of the popular American tune Gang’s All Here. In the video above, Ali and Cooke sing together on a BBC sports segment in 1964.

Most of the poems were in keeping with the album’s title, affirming Ali’s greatness. The video below is the title track, where he predicts beating Sonny Liston, animated by cartoonist Gavin Aung Than, known for his comic strip called Zen Pencils. The track is from a live performance and Ali’s statements are interjected with laughter from the audience.

Ali’s influence on music went beyond his own LP. The boxer emerged in the backdrop of the civil rights movement in the US and became a muse for many full time musicians. Among them was the white British pop star Johnny Wakelin, who delivered two hits riding on Ali’s popularity. The first was Black Superman which released in 1974 (video below) and has its hook in famous statements made by Ali, including “floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee”.

The song was in response to Ali’s victory over George Foreman in Kinshasha, Zaire, in a fight that was promoted as the “rumble in the jungle”. This was Ali’s first major victory after returning to professional boxing. He spent the years from 1967 to 1971 barred from the sport, stripped off his title for refusing to join the US army in its war against Vietnam.

The other song was the 1976 In Zaire, which also referred to the “Rumble in the Jungle” fight. It consolidated Ali’s stature as an almost mythic figure.

Ali was the muse for many singers in the US of course. Read more on that here. There were musical tributes from Jamaica and Zaire as well. The one below is by the Jamaican artist Dennis Alcapone, where Ali’s talents are translated into Jamaican Patois

And a Zaire band, Trio Madjesi and Orchestre Sosoliso, put out this tribute to Ali in the context of the 1974 bout against Foreman.