Songoftheday 2/16/24 - Day after day I'm more confused, yet I look for the light through the pourin' rain...

 

 

"Drift Away" - Uncle Kracker featuring Dobie Gray

from the album No Stranger To Shame (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #9 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 28

 

Today's song comes from amateur DJ turned rapper turned singer Uncle Kracker, who used his connection with fellow genre chameleon Kid Rock to land a recording contract. In the summer of 2001, he scored a top ten hit on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 with "Follow Me". 

 

Since that over-Autotuned retro number was the only success from Matthew Shafer's debut album, he doubled down on that in recording his sophomore effort No Stranger To Shame. The lead single from the record, "In A Little While", did decently on the radio, reaching #28 on Billboard's Mainstream Top-40 chart, #4 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format, and #26 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") station list. But without sales of a commercial single to prop it up, it stalled down at #59 on the Hot 100.

Shafer leaned even harder into the second release from the album, with not just sounding like an oldie but being an actual cover of an oldie. "Drift Away", written by Mentor Williams, was originally recorded by singer/actor John Henry Kurtz in 1972, but it never was a hit until a year later in a version from soul singer Dobie Gray. Dobie, who born Larry Brown and originally was an aspiring actor, was guided by Sonny Bono (yes that Sonny Bono) and changed his alias and signed to Cordak Records, releasing his debut single "Look At Me" in 1963, which popped on to the Hot 100 at #91. It would be another couple of years and another label, Charger, where Gray would put out "The 'In' Crowd", which scored his first top-40 hit on both the pop Hot 100 (#13) and R&B (#11) charts, and make the British Top-40 at #25. (The song would later be immortalized in an jazz-soul instrumental version by the Ramsey Lewis Trio.) Gray shuttled between labels, performing on stage and as a member of the rock fusion group Pollution.

In 1972, getting picked up by Decca Records, Dobie released the seminal country-soul album Drift Away, which contained the title track that would be his biggest success. The song went to #5 on the Hot 100, peaked at #12 on the Adult Contemporary list, and even made the R&B Singles chart at #42. The melting pot of Dobie's soulful vocals, rock guitars, and laid-back country production was a perfect match. 

Decca was soon folded into MCA Records, and Gray recorded two more albums for them without much more success. Again he was shuffled through labels for a while, and eventually landed another top-40 pop (#37) and R&B (#32) hit in 1979 with the light disco of "You Can Do It", which sounded like a KC & The Sunshine Band outtake (and that's a compliment). The singer came back in the 1980's as a country music artist on Capitol Records, where he had a handful of charting hits. One of them, "That's One To Grow On", even made the top-40 on Billboard's Country Singles chart at #35 in 1986. 

Which brings us to 2002, when Uncle Kracker asked Dobie to sing with him on a remake of "Drift Away". Produced by Shafer with Michael Bradford, the sound on this record is actually more dated and watered down (except for an unnecessary guitar solo wail) than Gray's 30 year old record. And while Gray gives his all and his heartfelt revision is by far the best part of this, the vast majority of "Kracker" is his electronically-mutated vocals. It also doesn't help with a music video that has Shafer looking like Fred Durst had been punched way too many times, and conveniently-placed American flags in a repair shop of all places, but hey that's were the Bush Jr America was then, and it paid back in droves...

Uncle Kracker and Dobie Gray's "Drift Away" became the second top ten hit on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 for either of them in August of 2003. On the radio, the song went to #10 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart, and spent ten weeks at #2 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 list. But it's biggest success was on the Adult Contemporary format, where it lingered at #1 for twenty-eight weeks, a record it held for fifteeen years. It spent 91 weeks on that latter list, making the year-end top five for both 2003 and 2004. Internationally, the single also made the top 40 in New Zealand at #25.

A third single from No Stranger To Shame, "Memphis Soul Song", was overshadowed by the overstay of "Drift Away", and only managed to place on Billboard's Adult Top-40 radio chart for a couple of months with a high of #35.

 

Dobie would continue to record but faded back into the background, and sadly passed away in 2011. 

 

As for Uncle Kracker/Matthew Shafer, he will eventually be back to the series.

 

(4/10)

 

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

 

Besides Dobie's solo and this version, singer Narvel Felts had a top ten country hit with a cover of "Drift Away" in 1973...

Michael Bolton scored a top-20 hit in the United Kingdom with a totally saccharine version from his Timeless album in 1992...

Finally, here's UC showing up at a Kenny Chesney concert (they will share a SOTD together soon) to perform the song...

Tomorrow I'll run down my top hits of this past week, then Song of the day will be back Monday with a combative diva.