“Kentucky Rain” (Elvis Presley)

This week we’re going to look at songs that pack a real emotional punch, starting with Elvis Presley’s “Kentucky Rain.” This is a powerful song given a powerful performance by the King and it hits you in the gut every time you hear it.

Elvis recorded “Kentucky Rain” on February 19, 1969. It was one of several powerful songs recorded in January and February at Memphis’ American Sound Studio, including “Don’t Cry Daddy,” “Suspicious Minds,” and “In the Ghetto.” These songs represented a revitalization of and a new direction for Mr. Presley’s musical career.

Even though Elvis was a huge factor in creating rock and roll music and popularizing the genre back in the 1950s, his career had somewhat stagnated since his release from the U.S. Army in 1964. Elvis spent the bulk of the decade acting in increasingly inconsequential movies and recording fluff songs from those movies. Given everything else happening musically during the 1960s (the British Invasion, the folk revival, psychedelia, etc.), Elvis was becoming less and less relevant. He might have been the King, but he no longer was the King for current music lovers.

Realizing this and hoping to make a change, Elvis put together a comeback TV special (official title: Singer Presents … Elvis) that aired on the NBC network on December 8, 1968. This special marked Elvis’ return to live performing after seven or so years focusing on film appearances and successfully rejuvenated his career. (It was also the most-watched show of the 1968-1969 television season.)

Following on that success, Elvis decided to head back to where it all started, Memphis, and record some new tunes. This time he didn’t go to Sun Studio, where he’d recorded his earliest hits, but rather to the smaller American Sound Studio. There, under the direction of producer Chips Moman, Elvis worked with the Memphis Boys (Reggie Young on guitar, Bobby Wood on piano, Bobby Emmons on organ, Tommy Cogbill and Mike Leach on bass, and Gene Chrisman on drums) to craft a new, more contemporary sound that had immediate appeal to modern audiences.

Part of that new sound was the choice of songs Elvis recorded. Instead of using the traditional Brill Building writers (such as Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman) that provided most of his movie music, Elvis choose songs from some of the more relevant young songwriters of the day. That included a young man named Eddie Rabbitt, who presented Elvis with the tune “Kentucky Rain.” It was a perfect combination.

(And, yes, that’s the same Eddie Rabbitt who went on to have a long and successful career in Nashville during the 1970s.)

“Kentucky Rain” follows the protagonist, a man whose wife has left him, on a trek across Kentucky to win her back. As the song starts he’s already traveled for “seven lonely days” through a dozen small towns. He’s “walking through the rain, thumbing for a ride”, on the “lonely Kentucky back road(s),” although he always seems to be at least a day behind. As the lyrics put it:

Kentucky rain keeps pouring down
And up ahead’s another town that I’ll go walking through
With the rain in my shoes (rain in my shoes)
Searching for you
In the cold Kentucky rain
In the cold Kentucky rain

The song is in C major, using typical I, IV, and V chords. There are some interesting turnarounds throughout, a nicely subdued pre-chorus (“With the rain in my shoes”), and then a big ramp up to a powerful C – Em – F – G7 progression in the chorus. The combination is killer, especially with Elvis’s emotion-packed vocal performance. It didn’t sound like the old Elvis, except it kind of did, but more personal. I liked it.

Most of the songs from Elvis’ Memphis sessions were released on the 1969 album, From Elvis in Memphis and its follow-up, From Memphis to Vegas/From Vegas to Memphis. “Kentucky Rain” was an exception, released only as a single. Released on January 29, 1970, the song hit #16 on the Billboard Hot 100, #3 on Billboard’s Easy Listening chart, and #31 on the Hot Country Singles chart. That was, unfortunately, lower than the previous Memphis-session singles (“In the Ghetto” hit #3, “Suspicious Minds” went all the way to #1, and “Don’t Cry Daddy” charted at #6) and may have contributed to what happened next.

Elvis could have built on the popular and critical success of the Memphis sessions, but instead was drawn back into the glitz and excess of the superstar performing world, complete with increasingly silly sequined jumpsuits, big shows in Las Vegas, sycophantic hangers on, and lots of alcohol and drugs. He never again regained the critical success he attained from those Memphis recordings, eventually dying of a drug overdose on August 16, 1977. He was just 42 years old but, for a kid in college at the time, it seemed like he’d been around forever.