On 29 October 1976, Elvis Presley recorded a song in his own living room. It was called “Way Down.” It came out the following June, sold reasonably well, and by the last week of August 1977, it had slipped to number 53 and was heading out of the charts entirely.
Elvis had been dead for eleven days. And then the record turned around and started climbing again — all the way to number one on two continents. Hidden at the very end of it is a world record that still stands today.
The song was written by a Nashville songwriter named Layng Martine Jr., who had already given Billy “Crash” Craddock a number one country hit with “Rub It In” and would later co-write Reba McEntire’s “The Greatest Man I Never Knew.” Elvis cut it at Graceland with producer Felton Jarvis, in the famous carpeted den, during the sessions that turned out to be the last studio recordings he ever made.
Elvis Presley – Way Down (Official Audio)
It was released on 6 June 1977, with “Pledging My Love” on the B-side. It was his 146th appearance on the American pop charts.
Nobody treated it as a farewell, because nobody knew it was one. When released, it went to number 31 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early August, then began the slow slide every single eventually makes. By the week ending 27 August, it had dropped to 53.
Then the charts did something they rarely do. “Way Down” reversed direction. It climbed back up and hit a new peak of number 18 in late September, six weeks after it had started falling. It went to number one on the American country chart the week he died. And in Britain the turnaround was even more dramatic: it had crawled to number 42 the week before his death, then jumped to number 4, then to number one for the week ending 3 September, where it stayed for five weeks.
The King’s Last Song | Elvis Presley’s Final Moments in Music
That was his 17th UK number one, which tied the record then held by The Beatles. It was also the last one he would ever have. Seven years earlier, “The Wonder of You” had been the previous.
Now play it to the end and listen for the record. Underneath Elvis, on the words “way on down,” is a gospel bass singer named J.D. Sumner — and at the close of the song he drops to a double low C, a full three octaves below middle C. Rolling Stone called it the lowest note ever sung on a Top 40 record. Guinness recognizes Sumner for the lowest note ever produced by the human voice, a feat he first pulled off on a 1966 recording of the hymn “Blessed Assurance.” It is a genuinely strange sound. Most people assume it is an instrument.
And Sumner was not a session hire. He had known Elvis since Elvis was a teenager hanging around gospel concerts in Memphis. In November 1971, Elvis brought him and his group The Stamps on tour, and they stayed with him for every single tour after that, right up to the final concert on 26 June 1977. Their harmonies are on nearly everything he recorded between 1972 and his death.
When Elvis was buried, Sumner was there singing for him too. So the last record Elvis Presley ever released ends with the deepest note in recorded music, sung by one of his oldest friends.