999,797: John Henry Kurtz — Drift Away

Plenty of songs suffer from one form or another of mistaken identity, but few get as badly mangled on the internet as rock and country standard "Drift Away". It has a commonly misidentified title (often thought to be "Give Me the Beat, Boys") and a mis-heard lyric that makes the song seem like a brilliant PR move for Mike Love ("Give me the Beach Boys"). You'll see a lot of sources claiming it as a Doobie Brothers song, but good luck finding one labeled as such that isn't actually the hit version by crossover savant Dobie Gray. The Rolling Stones cover is, bizarrely, frequently attributed to "The Beatles featuring the Rolling Stones", when it's difficult even to pretend that you're hearing a Beatle anywhere on the track.

Sifting through all the confusing misinformation about "Drift Away", you'll often come across a bit of trivia maddeningly tossed off and rarely explored, reading something like, "Written by Mentor Williams and first recorded by John Henry Kurtz..." before chugging right along to the part where Dobie Gray takes the song to number 5. As in, "John Henry who the hell is that guy?" He doesn't have a wikipedia entry, and his presence in the allmusic guide is as insignificant as any of the track's fairly anonymous backup singers. None of his music (allegedly comprising several albums on ABC) is in print or available for sale online. He appears to be a virtual nobody, just some guy who happened to get his hands on a future smash hit and promptly vanished into thin air.

But he had to have been somebody. Or at least known somebody. The list of guys who played on his "Reunion" album reads like a who's who of early '70s session wizards, from Skunk Baxter and Kenny Loggins to lesser known but equally heavy hitters like Country Joe sideman David Bennett Cohen, one-time Steely Dan keyboardist Michael Omartian, and Jim Gordon, famous first for his solid drumming with such acts as Delaney & Bonnie and second for suffering a schizophrenic episode that led to the murder of his mother. Helmed by A&R man Steve Barri (who signed such acts as Three Dog Night, The James Gang and Dusty Springfield) and armed with a cover of Loggins' "Danny's Song" and the newly crafted "Drift Away", Kurtz' effort had every chance to succeed. Instead, it barely rates a footnote in Dobie Gray's bio.

This might lead the educated listener to conclude that the song must sound like a gigantic pile of garbage, which, to be fair, it does not. The pace is more sluggish than on the more familiar variant, while Kurtz does his best with a decent country rock voice, even if his phrasing is a bit mannered. It doesn't help that the only apparent way to hear the song online is via some youtube audio that sounds like it was captured by placing a micro-cassette recorder inside a tank of water next to a turntable speaker. Nevertheless, it's clearly a pretty good try, but it doesn't come close to Gray's classic interpretation.

And, it turns out, John Henry Kurtz didn't really need his music career. A jack of many trades, Kurtz did a lot of acting, landing several roles on Broadway (such as a turn as Burbage in Marlowe), and bit parts on TV shows like The Cosby Mysteries. He carved a niche for himself as a voiceover artist, announcing for The NBC Nightly News, Court TV and countless ads. He was even a force in the Civil War reenactment community, donating a lot of artifacts from his personal collection for Ken Burns' documentary, and is fondly remembered as a Falstaffian character who once accidentally drank a cup of dirty socks. In the end, the fact that he was the first to record "Drift Away" didn't rate a mention in his obit.