However, his songwriting continued to be successful, as he wrote songs for Etta James, Otis Redding, Little Richard (his 1965 hit, "I Don't Know What You Got but It's Got Me"), and notably Aretha Franklin, who had a hit in 1968 with "Chain of Fools", a song Covay had written some fifteen years earlier. Franklin won a Grammy for her performance. Over the years Covay's compositions have been recorded by such varied artists as Gene Vincent, Wanda Jackson, Connie Francis, Steppenwolf, Bobby Womack, the Rolling Stones, Wilson Pickett, Small Faces, Grant Green, and Peter Wolf, among others.