Aug 302018
 
olivia chaney long time gone

Olivia Chaney is a classically trained British singer/songwriter. Her profile has been rising steadily in recent years, as she released an album called The Queen of Hearts with the Decemberists in 2017 under the group name Offa Rex (we gave it four stars). This summer, she put out her second solo studio album Shelter. Alongside her many originals is a cover of “Long Time Gone,” a song first recorded by… well, that’s a bit complicated.

According to Chaney’s press release, the song was written by Frank Harford and Tex Ritter and “first recorded” by the Everly Brothers. This is incorrect. Now before you go firing off an angry email to her publicist, the whole thing appears to be a case of mistaken attribution that predates the internet.

The database Second Hand Songs claims that the Everlys were the first ones to record the song in 1958, though their own comments section disputes this. When I first saw the listing on the site, I thought something was off because the tune was on the Everlys’ album Songs Our Daddy Taught Us — billed as a covers record. Plus, I didn’t think Tex Ritter, a popular country singer in the ‘40s and ‘50s, would write a tune directly for the Everlys. When I pulled up Ritter’s “Long Time Gone” it had different lyrics and a different melody entirely. Also, some sites list Ritter’s as being from 1944, while others have it as from 1946.

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