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| Robert Knight |
The Tennessean reports the country-soul musician died Sunday after a short, undisclosed illness in Nashville, Tennessee. Additional details, including funeral arrangements, have not been announced.
Knight started out as a member of the Fairlanes and sang lead for The Paramounts before pursuing a solo career in the 1960s. Billboard reports he signed a deal with songwriters/producers Buzz Cason and Fred Foster's label Rising Sons Music after studying chemistry at Tennessee State University.
Cason and songwriting partner Mac Gayden wrote "Everlasting Love," a Motown-flavored track that crossed over into the pop charts and reached No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1967.
"Buzz and Mac were country artists, and I was R&B, and so I had to make it more of an R&B song," Knight told Rebeat Magazine in a 2016 interview. "I didn't sing it the way they had written it. I made some changes to fit my voice, and I didn't do it note for note. They had the melody going too fast... I start singing a beat and a half: 'hearts-go-a-stray' -- like that. It wasn't like that in the beginning, and I think that's what got 'Everlasting Love' off the ground."
Knight also had minor hits with "Blessed are the Lonely," "Love on a Mountain Top" and "Isn't It Lonely Together," but "Everlasting Love" has endured and charted in the top 40 in four separate decades. The song reached the top 10 when Carl Carlton covered it in 1974, and big names like Gloria Estefan and U2 have also recorded popular versions.
According to Billboard, Knight left the music business in later years and worked at Vanderbilt University in Nashville as a lab technician, chemistry teacher and member of the grounds crew.
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