On 10 March 1975, Elvis Presley walked into RCA Studio C in Hollywood and recorded a song that other people had already made pleasant. By the time he finished with it, it was not pleasant anymore. It was a man talking about how lonely his life had been.
The song is “And I Love You So,” and before Elvis got near it, it had already had three lives.
It was written by a young folk singer called Don McLean — the man who would go on to write “American Pie” — and appeared on his 1970 debut album Tapestry. It went almost unnoticed. It was not even an A-side; it came out as the flip side of his first single. Then Bobby Goldsboro and Bobby Vinton both recorded it, and neither version went anywhere.
Then, in 1973, crooner Perry Como recorded it and turned it into a genuine hit—number one on the Easy Listening chart. Como’s version is warm, smooth, and gentle. It is the sound of a comfortable man in a cardigan.
Elvis Presley – And I Love You So (Official Audio)
Elvis did something else entirely.
To understand why, look at where he was in March 1975. He was 40 years old. His divorce from Priscilla had been finalized eighteen months earlier. His daughter Lisa Marie was seven and living in California. His health was deteriorating badly. And he was surrounded, constantly, by staff and friends and hangers-on — in a house he could not leave without a plan.
The song is about a man explaining that people ask how he has survived this long, and he cannot answer them. It speaks plainly about how lonely life has been, and the darkness that follows.
He did not sing it like a love song. He sang it like a statement.
Elvis – And I Love You So – 1977
The performance starts almost as a murmur, close to the microphone, then slowly gathers as the strings and backing voices come in behind him. It sounds less like a record and more like a late-night conversation that somebody happened to tape.
He clearly loved it. He put it into his live shows within days of recording it and kept it there for the rest of his life — through the 1977 tours, right to the end. The version most people know now was filmed in Omaha on 19 June 1977 for the television special Elvis in Concert.
He was dead eight weeks later. That special aired on 3 October 1977, six weeks after his funeral.
A quiet folk song that nobody noticed, made comfortable by a crooner, and then handed to a 40-year-old man in a Hollywood studio who knew exactly what the words meant.