Dobie Gray likely had no idea in 1973 when he released “Drift Away” that the song would become part of music history.
The title track of his fifth studio album, “Drift Away” is written by Mentor Williams. First recorded by both Mike Berry and John Henry Kurtz, it’s Gray’s version that remains the most popular. A Top 5 hit for Gray and the biggest single of his career, he likely could have never predicted that the song would see a resurgence again 30 years later. Fortunately for him, that’s exactly what happened.
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30 years later, in 2003, a new version of “Drift Away” was released. A duet with Gray and Uncle Kracker, the song is on Uncle Kracker’s sophomore No Stranger To Shame project. The collaboration became a No. 1 single. It marks the biggest gap in Billboard’s US history of an artist reaching the Top 10.
Not only did Gray’s duet with Uncle Kracker reach No.1, but it stayed at the top of the charts for an astonishing 28 weeks.
The Story Behind Dobie Gray’s Big Hit, “Drift Away”
“Drift Away” sounds like a feel-good song, and in some ways it is. But the song is also about heartache. It begins with, “Day after day I’m more confused / Yet I look for the light through the pouring rain / You know that’s a game that I hate to lose / And I’m feelin’ the strain / Ain’t it a shame / Oh, give me the beat boys and free my soul / I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away.”
“Drift Away” was not only a career-changing song for Gray but for Williams as well. Although he went on to write other hits, including “When We Make Love” by Alabama, “Drift Away” marked a pivotal shift for him as well.
“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 says. “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,” he continues. “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.”
In 2023, Dustin Lynch used part of “Drift Away” on his song “Chevrolet“. The song is on Lynch’s Killed The Cowboy record.
Photo by Richard E. Aaron/Redferns
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