For Valentine’s Day, we consider one of the great songs about lost love, “Loving Arms,” recorded by several artists, including Dobie Gray.
While the title of the song might make one think the song is a happy love song, instead the singer is looking back on a lost love, missing those loving arms.
Oh, I’ve been too long in the wind, yes too long in the rain,
Taking any comfort that I can;
I’ve been looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains,
And lying in your loving arms again;
I can almost feel your loving arms again.
“Loving Arms” has been recorded by a number of artists, starting with the song’s writer, Tom Jans. Jans released his version on his 1974 self-titled album. Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge released “Loving Arms” as a single in late 1973 and on the album Full Moon (1973). Subsequently, Elvis Presley also included the song on his 1974 album Good Times. After Presley’s death, his version was released as a single in 1981.
But it was Dobie Gray who was one of the first, along with Kristofferson and Coolidge, to chart with the song from his album Loving Arms. His version made the Billboard Top 100 (at 61) in 1973.
Dobie Gray is one of those artists who is so identified with one great song (“Drift Away”) that we often overlook the rest of magnificent work. His take on “Loving Arms” reveals all of the sadness in the lyrics.
Other artists have continued to record “Loving Arms,” including the Dixie Chicks (The Chicks) on their 1998 album Wide Open Spaces.
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, music critic Dave Marsh noted that “Williams’ best move was finding the right vehicle for his song,” noting that Gray’s voice was perfect for the song’s “complex message in which the desire to rock out is presented as the desire to dream, the longing to bop is equated with the longing to be soothed.”
(2004) than you will find in most books on music. 