Hit songs have a knack for going global, traveling from star to star to superstar. But at their best, important songs are less about loud volumes of gold records. It’s those quieter stories behind the spotlight, rich with unknowable meaning, that are truly timeless.
Glendale’s favorite musical son, Marty Robbins, made a career of finding those moments in life, and then making moments for others. And while music fans will delight in the new biopic “Elvis,” which hits theaters June 24 to chronicle the life of singer Elvis Presley, lost in the luster of an otherwise legendary career may be The King of Rock and Roll’s connection to a classic song written by Robbins, the Country Music Hall of Famer who was born in Glendale in 1925.
And Elvis wasn’t the only one touched by the song “You Gave Me a Mountain.” Storied singer Frankie Laine, 24 years after turning his own cover version into a major hit, which made him include it nightly in his live shows, said the song “remains a difficult number for me to get through today. It’s ironic that my career got a second wind from a song that fills me with sadness.”
