Baby Now That I've Found You

"Baby, Now That I've Found You" is a song written by Tony Macaulay and John Macleod, and performed by the Foundations. Part of the song was written in the same bar of a Soho tavern where Karl Marx is supposed to have written Das Kapital. The lyrics are a plea that an unnamed subject not break up with the singer.

Background
According to Roy Delo of the group, The Ways and Means who were managed by Ron Fairway, they were offered the chance to record "Baby Now That I've Found You". They already had some success with their single, "Sea of Faces". One day Tony Macaulay came around and got out a guitar. They heard the song and said "yeh, it’s a nice catchy song, but it's not the sort of song for us", and to their later regret, turned it down. So the song was given to The Foundations.

Ron Fairway is the man who is credited with first discovering The Foundations. He became co-manager of the group. Barry Class was the man with the money while Fairway was the man with the connections, whose job was to find gigs for the band.

Original recording and the Foundations
On 25 August, 1967 the Foundations released the song as their début single. It was a sleeper, and for ten weeks it wasn't doing anything. Unlike The Ways and Means' single, "Sea of Faces" which was played on and became a hit on pirate radio stations, Radio City and Radio Caroline, "Baby, Now that I've Found You" wasn't played on them. Luckily for The Foundations, their song wasn't being played on the pirate stations at that stage. The newly launched BBC Radio 1 was avoiding those singles that were being played on the pirate stations.

Chart success
After receiving airplay on BBC Radio 1, it met with great success. Having moved up from the previous week's no. 2 spot, "Baby, Now That I've Found You" replaced The Bee Gees' single, "Massachusetts" in the no. 1 spot of the Melody Maker Pop 30 chart. The Foundations now had their picture on the front page of the November 11 issue of Melody Maker. It was still at no. 1 the following week, confirming the two weeks at the top of the UK Singles Chart status. It was also noted in the Melody Maker magazine that week that Ron Fairway was no longer director of Class Management. This left Barry Class in sole charge of things.

It also became a number 11 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. The song also reached number 1 on the Canadian RPM magazine charts on 10 February 1968.

The B side "Come On Back to Me" made the Record World, One Stop Top Ten chart in the Consolidated One Stop Detroit, Michigan section. It was no. 5 on the week of February 10, 1968.

Other recordings
Another version of the song was recorded by the Foundations in 1968, featuring Colin Young, Clem Curtis' replacement. This was on a Marble Arch album that featured newer stereo versions of their previous hits.

Clem Curtis, the original lead singer of the band, recorded his own version which was released on the Opium label OPIN 001 as a 7" single and a 12" version OPINT001 in 1987. In the late 1980s, Clem Curtis and Alan Warner teamed up to recut "Baby, Now That I've Found You" and "Build Me Up Buttercup", as well as other hits of the Foundations.

Alison Krauss version
In 1995, American bluegrass-country singer Alison Krauss released the song as a single from her compilation album Now That I've Found You: A Collection. Her version appeared in the Australian comedy film, The Castle. It peaked at number 49 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart. The song won the 1996 Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. In 2024, Rolling Stone ranked the song at #135 on its 200 Greatest Country Songs of All Time ranking.

Use in film
The Foundations' recording of the song appeared on the soundtrack to the film Shallow Hal. The Alison Krauss version was featured in the 1997 Australian comedy, The Castle. Her rendition was also featured in the end credits of the 2001 film Delivering Milo.