Yeah, I knew it was an old song when their version came out. I liked every single one the 70s version by Commander Cody the best.
I remember the British Invasion band “The Searchers” redid a lot of old songs and they were invariably better than the originals.
Commander Cody probably did a more polished version no doubt. It was interesting to hear the original guy tell the story of how it actually went down and it wasn’t in California. Commander Cody did a lot of remakes in the 70’s that were really good. “Smoke that Cigarette” “Beat me Daddy Eight to the Bar” come to mind