By 1973, Dobie Gray had already spent nearly a decade chasing another hit when the right song finally arrived.
“Drift Away,” written by Mentor Williams, gave Gray the biggest pop success of his career and one of the decade’s most enduring sing-alongs. Its warm blend of rock, soul, and gospel climbed into the Top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, while its celebration of music itself eventually attracted interpreters including Rod Stewart.
Gray’s career had begun years earlier.
The Texas-born singer scored his first major hit with “The ‘In’ Crowd” in 1965, but maintaining that momentum proved difficult. He continued recording and performing, eventually spending time as the lead singer of the band Pollution before returning to solo work.
“Drift Away” offered a fresh start.
Mentor Williams, the brother of songwriter Paul Williams, wrote the song, and musician John Henry Kurtz recorded an earlier version in 1972.
“I think one of the hardest things for me to learn about songwriting was to really expose my feelings and weaknesses and to write personal, emotional things,” Williams said in a 1988 interview. “As soon as I started doing that, I realized other people were relating to my songs. You can study how to write and spend a lot of time writing, but without this emotional content in a song, it’s just not there. ‘Drift Away’ was a big breakthrough for me. It was a song where it suddenly was okay for me to write about being hurt and let people know that I had been hurt and I wasn’t afraid to expose my feelings.”
Gray cut his rendition in Nashville with producer Mentor Williams, surrounding his expressive vocal with an easygoing arrangement built around acoustic guitar.
“We just had a feeling about it as we were coming out of the studio,” Gray told Classic Bands. “First of all, we thought it was gonna be a hit song, and then we hoped it would be a classic.”
It didn’t take long for them to be proven right. The record connected almost immediately.
Released in 1973, “Drift Away” reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and remained on the chart for months. It became Gray’s first Top 10 single since “The ‘In’ Crowd” and ultimately the song most closely associated with his career.
Its lyrics gave the record an unusually universal appeal.
Rather than centering on romance or heartbreak, “Drift Away” finds relief in hearing a favorite song. Its famous chorus asks rock ‘n’ roll to carry the narrator away, turning the track into a tribute to the comfort and escape that music can provide.
Other artists soon embraced it.
Rod Stewart recorded “Drift Away” during the 1970s, bringing his unmistakably raspy vocal to Williams’ composition. Over the years, the song was also interpreted by performers including Roy Orbison, Michael Bolton and The Rolling Stones, whose version remained unreleased for decades.
Gray himself eventually returned to “Drift Away” in spectacular fashion. In 2003, he joined Uncle Kracker for a new version that became another major hit, reaching the Top 10 on the Hot 100 and spending a then-record 28 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart.
Fifty-three years after Gray’s recording became a hit, the song’s central idea hasn’t lost its force. “Drift Away” is ultimately about what a great record can do when everything else feels overwhelming, a sentiment that remains every bit as powerful today.
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