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Rolling Stones songs: I’ve Been Loving You Too Long

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There were times and your love is growing cold/ My love is growing stronger as our affair grows old…

Written by: Redding/Butler
Recorded: RCA Studios, Hollywood, USA, May 12-13 1965
*Data taken from Martin Elliott’s book THE ROLLING STONES COMPLETE RECORDING SESSIONS 1962-2012

From Songfacts:
Redding wrote this with Jerry Butler (“For Your Precious Love,” “Only the Strong Survive”) in a Buffalo hotel room. The song finds Otis in a predicament: his love affair is going cold, but he’s been loving her for so long, he can’t stop now.

This was Redding’s best selling single and biggest hit while he was alive. Redding died in a plane crash on December 10, 1967.

In 1969 a cover by Ike and Tina Turner peaked at #68 in the US, selling over 500,00 copies. Bob Krasnow, who bought the track to Ike Turner then produced their version, recalled in a 1971 Rolling Stone magazine article that Ike hated Otis Redding: “He just didn’t think Otis had it.”

The Rolling Stones covered this in 1966 and released it on their live album Got Live If You Want It!. This song, along with “Fortune Teller,” were actually recorded in a studio with audience noises dubbed in.

The famed multi-instrumentalist Booker T. Jones played piano on several of Otis’ hits, including this one. Speaking to Mojo magazine October 2011, he recalled: “My experience having been a church player, and having had the classical experience, really helped there. The ‘walk-ups’ on those songs are classical type walk-ups, the way the chorus progresses to where the chromatics strike, that emotion. Those were integral to me as a person and to the song. Working on something like that, Otis and me became very good friends, you know, spending time on the road or in a studio together. ‘I’ve Been Loving You Too Long’ and ‘Try A Little Tenderness.’ Those were, I think, some of our best moments together.”

From the The Rolling Stones – All the Songs, The Story Behind Every Track book:
During the sixties, the songs of Otis Redding transformed black American music and also exerted a major influence on white singers in the world of rock ’n’ roll. “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” was one of the biggest hits of this singer from Georgia. Written with Jerry Butler in a hotel room in Buffalo, New York, the song was recorded more or less immediately. There are two versions: the first (mono), which dates from April 1965, was released as a single in April of that year and reached number 21 on the Billboard pop chart on June 19.

The second (stereo) was one of eleven numbers recorded with Booker T. & The M.G.’s, the Mar-Keys, and the Memphis Horns at Stax Studios in Memphis during their July 9–10 sessions, and was subsequently released on the masterly album Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul. A little more than a month after the release of the single, the Rolling Stones, enthralled by Otis Redding’s performance, recorded their own version of this superb, moving love song: My love is growing stronger as you become a habit to me/I’ve been loving you a little too long, I can’t stop now.

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