"Baby, Please Don't Go" (Them)

The blues standard "Baby, Please Don't Go" is a surprisingly old song.  We're talking late 1800s here.
Originating in the Deep South, it seems to have come from the prison work song "Another Man Done Gone," which tells the story of a man dying while toiling on a chain gang (which explains the line in "Baby, Please Don't Go" about Left the county farm / Had the shackles on).
The first recording of "Baby, Please Don't Go" was in 1935 by Mississippi's Big Joe Williams, who—as an anomaly of live fast, drink hard, and die young bluesmen of the era—ended up enjoying a decades-long career as a folk blues artist, influencing artists from Muddy Waters to Bob Dylan along the way.
But my personal favorite recording of the song is the 1965 version by the Belfast-based Them, featuring a spry, young Van Morrison on lead vocal.  From moment one, the song threatens with its rumbling bassline and piercing lead guitar, which (depending upon which website you want to believe) was either played by Them's guitarist Billy Harrison or future Led Zeppelin pilot Jimmy Page, who was doing session work for artists like Them around this time.  The sense of menace and danger in the song escalates as it rolls along, punctuated by Morrison's bluesy yawps and blasts of harmonica.
The whole affair sounds like a speeding car that's about to careen out of control, yet just keeps defying fate and hugging the road at every turn.  (Which is exactly what makes it the perfect/worst song for driving ever.)