March 24, 2020
After spending an afternoon working out the keyboard parts to this song, I had the harmony bouncing around in my head, but I had no ideas for the lyrics.
That night while I was asleep, a melody line kept repeating in my dreams and I was subconsciously trying to come up with lyrics. Something about walking with a man named Elvis kept coming to mind, so the next morning I quickly wrote down the phrase …
“walking down a hill to the sea with a man named Elvis walking next to me”
That was all I had for the next few hours until for some reason, I got the idea to look up Elvis' songs. When I saw that he had recorded 766 songs over the years, I was totally blown away.
I challenged myself to write the whole song just using those titles… Eventually, I realized that wouldn’t work without some connecting phrases to link the titles together and make a story line. So I got busy and came up with this strange story…
I was talking with my writing partner, Drew Duncan on the phone and mentioned that I was trying to write a song using Elvis titles but I didn't mention the story of Elvis coming to me in the dream. He thought it would be a fun project and asked to hear it when I got it finished.
After I had done the first draft of the lyrics, I found out that that very day marked the point in time where Elvis had been dead for as long as he had been alive… It’s almost as though he came to me in that dream so I could write a song to commemorate his life.
I hope you enjoy it. I put the Elvis song titles in ALL CAPS in the lyrics below as cheat notes for you...
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lyrics
LYRICS:
It was misty up on BLUEBERRY HILL THANKS TO THE ROLLING SEA.
Out of the fog, a young Elvis Presley appeared mysteriously.
He said HEY, HEY, HEY… DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? I answered BY AND BY …
I'm sorry I DON’T…but DON’T CRY, DADDY and DON’T ASK ME WHY
… then we walked on down to the beach *
… and in the glow of a BLUE MOON we took a MOONLIGHT SWIM
The Stranger spoke, then he smiled with a meaning KNOWN ONLY TO HIM
He said,I’m here to tell you SOMETHING … ALMOST ALWAYS TRUE
Your LITTLE DARLIN’s LOVIN’ ARMS may not only be LOVING YOU
CHORUS:
I said “I’m DOIN’ THE BEST I CAN trying to FOLLOW THAT DREAM”
My LITTLE MAMA is a HARD HEADED WOMAN, or so it would seem
You’re young, you’ve got FAME AND FORTUNE … IT’S EASY FOR YOU
But I’m tellin’ you, Stranger … I still GOT A LOT OF LIVING TO DO
* Elvis just shook his head
He said Bobby, MY BOY, come and STAND BY ME
I’m gonna tell you about a time when MY BABY LEFT ME
It made MY HAPPINESS dis-appear like a SNOWBIRD in May
and then the only thing I wanted was to … MAKE THE WORLD GO AWAY
* Huh ! … that was a hard time …
.. and then my baby, she turned and She said ..
JUST BECAUSE YOU think I’m STUCK ON YOU
doesn’t mean IT’S NOW OR NEVER ‘cause YOU ASKED ME TO
But the funny thing about it is SHE STILL THINKS I CARE
She never knew that her LITTLE SISTER let me be her TEDDY BEAR
CHORUS:
I said “I’m DOIN’ THE BEST I CAN trying to FOLLOW THAT DREAM”
My LITTLE MAMA was a HARD HEADED WOMAN, so it would seem
You’re young, you’ve got FAME AND FORTUNE … IT’S EASY FOR YOU
But I’m tellin’ you, Stranger … I still GOT A LOT OF LIVING TO DO
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