Everlasting Love - Robert Knight Version

Robert Knight Version

The original version of "Everlasting Love" was recorded at Fred Foster Sound Studio in Nashville: the session personnel included Kenny Buttrey on drums and Carol Montgomery providing background vocals with song composer Buzz Cason. According to Cason, the track "had some different sounds on it that, for the time period, were kind of innovative. The string sound is actually an organ and we used a lot of echo."

Although Buzz Cason and Mac Gayden had written "Everlasting Love" to serve as the B-side for their composition "The Weeper" which Robert Knight would record the next day, the hit potential of "Everlasting Love" was evident at the end of that recording session - on which - and it was the last-named song which was issued as Knight's single in July 1967 ("The Weeper" would in fact never be released, the track "Somebody's Baby" served as the B-side for "Everlasting Love").

Debuting on the Billboard Hot 100 dated 30 September 1967, "Everlasting Love" had already reached #1 in Philadelphia and Detroit by the time of its Top 40 debut on 21 October 1967. Cason - drove...the promotion guys nuts since it hit in one market then several weeks later pop up somewhere else." The track spent its second week at its Hot 100 peak of #13 on the chart dated December 2, 1967 then dropped off the Hot 100 over the next three weeks. The R&B chart peak of "Everlasting Love" was #14.

In its original release Knight's "Everlasting Love" lost out in the UK to a cover by Love Affair although Knight's version did spend two weeks at #40 UK in January 1968. In the spring of 1974 Knight's "Everlasting Love" had a second UK release to followup the Top Ten success of the reissue of Knight's "Love on a Mountain Top"; this time the first-named track reached #19.

An airplay staple on American oldies radio stations (though less so than the 1974 Carl Carlton version), Knight's "Everlasting Love" has become a "cult favorite" of the beach music scene. In a 2011 interview Buzz Cason stated that the Robert Knight original of "Everlasting Love" remained Cason's favourite version of the song: "I just think Robert's was the one that had the magic in it".

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