Here’s a little secret about the last single Elvis ever put out. The deepest, lowest note on the whole record doesn’t belong to Elvis at all.
Let’s back up.
Elvis recorded a song called “Way Down” on October 29, 1976, right at home in his own studio at Graceland. A songwriter named Layng Martine Jr. wrote it. The record came out on June 6, 1977, with a tune called “Pledging My Love” on the flip side.
And people loved it. “Way Down” went all the way to No. 1 on the country chart in America, and over in the United Kingdom it sat at No. 1 for five whole weeks.
You can hear how much fun Elvis was having while they cut it. On the session tape he cracks a joke about his piano player. “When Briggs’s fingers start bleedin’ we know we got it,” he says.
Give it a play, and listen all the way to the very last few seconds.
Elvis Presley, “Way Down” (official audio)
Did you catch that deep rumble at the end? That’s the secret.
The low voice that drops down underneath Elvis belongs to a gospel bass singer named J.D. Sumner, who sang with a group called the Stamps. On that final line, Sumner sinks all the way down to a note called a double low C. That’s three octaves below middle C on a piano, which is about as low as a human voice can reasonably go.
Rolling Stone magazine later said it set a record at the time. It was the lowest note ever hit on a Top 40 single.
Think about that. Millions of people bought this record and played it over and over, and most of them never realized the note that gives them chills at the end isn’t Elvis. It’s the big friendly giant standing a few feet away from him.
Elvis loved gospel music his whole life. He grew up on it, he sang it for fun between takes and he always liked having those deep gospel voices around him in the studio. So it’s fitting that his final single tips its hat to that world, with J.D. Sumner going lower than just about anybody ever had on a pop record.
Go back and listen one more time now that you know what you’re hearing. Once you catch that bottom note, you can’t un-hear it.