In January 1971, Larry Gatlin was waiting tables in Houston. He was a young singer and songwriter from Seminole, Texas, born May 2, 1948.
Then the phone rang. Terry Blackwood of the Imperials, a gospel group, was calling about a spot in the group. Gatlin flew to Las Vegas, watched Elvis’s shows and even joined a gospel sing in Elvis’s suite.
Gatlin later wrote all about it in his own column for Fox News in 2017. After he sang with the Imperials on Jimmy Dean’s TV show, Elvis gave him a few words of encouragement: “Kid, you sing pretty durn good. Good luck.” Gatlin says that was the last time he saw Elvis in person.
He had no idea yet that Elvis would end up singing his words.
Gatlin had written a song called “Help Me.” It’s a prayer, plain and simple, a man asking God for help. Kris Kristofferson recorded it first, in 1972. Then in December 1973, Elvis cut the song at Stax in Memphis, with Felton Jarvis producing. Here’s how it sounded when it was done, so you can hear the voice Gatlin’s prayer ended up in.
Elvis’s studio recording of “Help Me”
Gatlin wasn’t in the room that day. But J.D. Sumner was. Sumner was the deep bass singer of the Stamps, the gospel quartet that sang behind Elvis by then. And later, Sumner told Gatlin what he saw.
According to Gatlin, Sumner said that when it came time to record, Elvis did something odd with the microphone. He lowered it way down to “little boy height.”
Nobody knew what he was up to. “The band members and the Stamps started laughing,” Gatlin wrote, passing along what Sumner told him.
Then Elvis showed them why. Gatlin’s column, still passing along Sumner’s account, goes on:
“Then he knelt down on his knees, raised his hands, his heart, and his voice toward the sky and sang “HELP ME.””
The microphone was down low because Elvis meant to sing that prayer on his knees.
Gatlin’s reaction when he heard the story still jumps off the page. “The King of Rock ‘n Roll sang my song to THE KING of KINGS…HALLELUJAH!!”
Elvis didn’t leave the song in the studio, either. On March 20, 1974, he sang “Help Me” on stage at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis in front of a hometown crowd. That show is on the album “Elvis Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis.” Listen for how the prayer sounds when he sings it for a whole arena.
Elvis sings “Help Me” live in Memphis, March 1974
The studio version came out in 1974, paired with “If You Talk in Your Sleep.” “Help Me” was the side sent to country radio, and it climbed to No. 6 on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart the week of Aug 10, 1974. You’ll find it on Elvis’s album “Promised Land.”
Elvis later recorded a second Gatlin song, “Bitter They Are, Harder They Fall.” This one’s worth a listen too, since it’s the other Gatlin song that ended up in Elvis’s hands.
The second Larry Gatlin song Elvis recorded
As for Gatlin, his own career took off too. With his brothers he had a No. 1 country hit in 1979, “All the Gold in California.”
Still, it’s hard to top a story like this one for a songwriter. A young singer from Seminole, Texas, writes a prayer, and Elvis gets down on his knees to sing it.