May 7, 2003

     Something about the chemistry worked. The record was No. 2 last week on the Billboard Adult Top 40 chart and nearing the top 10 at Adult Contemporary, returning Gray — a Nashville resident since the late '70s — to near the top of the U.S. charts for the first time in 25 years. And on Monday, Gray and Uncle Kracker sang their duet together on the Tonight Show With Jay Leno.

     Drift Away, written by Mentor Williams, has been released by known quantities such as Ike & Tina Turner, Ringo Starr, Rod Stewart, Roy Orbison, The Drifters and Michael Bolton, but it became Gray's signature tune.

     ''There were two versions out there before mine,'' Gray recalled from his Waverly-Belmont neighborhood home. ''One was Steppenwolf and the other was John Henry Kurtz. And I was pulling my hair out, because I felt the song was a very strong contender to be a hit record.''

     By this time, Gray was looking for hits to sing. He was newly signed to MCA Records, having already pursued a music career for well over a decade. He'd moved from his native Texas to Los Angeles, changed his stage name (several times) and scored a Top 20 hit with the Motown-inspired The 'In' Crowd in 1965. He also had spent more than two years starring in the L.A. production of the love-in musical Hair.

     Gray recorded Drift Away in Nashville with songwriter Williams in the producer's chair and a bunch of top session pickers, many of whom still work in town today. Reggie Young's crackling guitar intro heralds a bright, sing-along number about the restorative power of music that is sort of directed at the band itself.

''Give me the beat, boys, and free my soul/I want to get lost in your rock and roll and drift away,'' Gray sings with hints of Ray Charles and Bill Withers. The single reached No. 5 on the pop charts, which isn't a smash, but it found a sort of permanent place on the radio.

     That's where Uncle Kracker, a k a Matt Shafer, heard it. As Kid Rock's tattooed D.J., close buddy and songwriting partner (he helped with Cowboy, Cocky and Lay It on Me), Shafer was catapulted to fame alongside the improbable rock rapper. Kracker's own sets and albums veer crazily from Motor City hip-hop to Skynyrd-ish rock to smoother material that hit at adult contemporary radio.

     ''I had a hit called Follow Me,'' Shafer says. ''It was the only song on my entire album that sounded like that . . .very mellow. So I was doing Drift Away live at my shows, because it fit what I wanted to be doing.''

     Radio people urged him to put the cover on a new album, and with 2002's No Stranger to Shame, he did just that, but with his own trepidation.

     ''I always think if you're going to cover a song you should make it better than the original. And in this case, that was pretty much next to impossible.''

     Somebody in his gang suggested getting Gray to sing duet part, and Shafer went from ''that's idiotic'' to ''let's try that'' in a few hours, and calls were made.

     ''We got along famously,'' Gray says. ''It was nice that he turned out to be a good person — it would have been too bad if he'd turned out to be a snot-nose.''

Shafer (whose off-stage graciousness, along with Kid Rock's, is widely acknowledged) gawked at Gray's singing and more.

     ''I remembered The 'In' Crowd and all that stuff, but I didn't remember really that he was that good. I've met a lot of people who were a real big disappointment to hear them after X amount of years. But when Dobie walked into the studio that day and opened his mouth, it was ridiculous.''

     He's on to something, that Uncle Kracker. Gray is a sensational singer who tried a lot of ways in and a lot of genres, including country, but whose stars never lined up for a very big career bang. In his own mind, he's always been a pop singer in the Johnny Mathis mold, but his records came out more diverse than that.

     ''It's been a headache for record companies trying to market me,'' he says. ''If they can't pigeonhole you and say he's this or that — and they've never been able to do that — that was a drawback. At the same time, I have a huge crossover audience.''

     The new version of Drift Away, which is being played on radio stations such as The River (107.5 FM), suggests that the audience may be growing younger. Or at the very least it proves the longevity of the song.

     ''It was my baby,'' Gray says. ''Even though The 'In' Crowd was a bigger record, Drift Away is the one that's hung in there and just won't let go.''

Dobie Gray's story

     Dobie Gray's career never reached the stratospheric heights of some of his early contemporaries such as Jackie Wilson and Sam & Dave. But he's earned some cool kudos over his four decades nonetheless. He played the Grand Ole Opry numerous times, including the last regular Ryman Auditorium show, just before its move to the modern Opry House in 1974.

     As a born Texan who grew up on country and R&B music, Gray has written songs that fit many genres, with cuts by Don Williams, Etta James and the great country duo of George Jones and Tammy Wynette. John Conlee's Got My Heart Set on You was his biggest hit as a writer.

     In the '70s, Gray developed relationships that allowed him to tour South Africa, and his insistence that he would play only for integrated audiences made him the first performer to do so, according to his Web site. The title cut of his 1986 Capitol album From Where I Stand later became the title track of a 3-CD set tracing ''the black experience in country music'' released by Warner Bros. and the Country Music Foundation.

     As a country artist, Gray can count himself among the half-dozen or so black performers who toiled in the wake of Charley Pride's success. Gray says he always felt welcome in Music City, where he moved in the late '70s, while the measure of racism he felt in the industry resided at radio.

     Had he achieved megafame in his prime, Gray says, ''I'd probably be dead by now because I'd have gone crazy.'' As it is, he's healthy, touring occasionally and pursuing select projects that interest him. He's had a lucrative side career singing television jingles. He continues to write songs and spends a significant amount of time tending his garden.