Putnam, Charlie McCoy and himself on guitar." The background vocals on the song were performed by Buzz Cason and Carol Montgomery. Robert Knight recalls that he heard "Everlasting Love" for the first time at the actual recording session: "I didn't sing it the [as] written[:] I made some changes to fit my voice, and I didn't do it note for note. They had the melody going too fast, and it was jamming, it wasn't doing right, it wasn't sounding right. So I started what you call a steady step. 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." Debuting on the Billboard Hot 100 dated September 30, 1967, "Everlasting Love" had already reached No. 1 in Philadelphia and Detroit by the time of its top 40 debut on October 21, 1967. Cason admitted that the single "drove ... the promotion guys nuts since it hit in one market then several weeks later pop up somewhere else." The track spent its second week at its Hot 100 peak of No. 13 on the chart dated November 25, 1967 then dropped off the Hot 100 over the next three weeks. The R&B chart peak of "Everlasting Love" was No. 14. In its original release, Knight's "Everlasting Love" lost out in the UK to a cover by Love Affair, although Knight's version did spend two weeks at No. 40 UK in January 1968. In the spring of 1974, Knight's "Everlasting Love" had a second UK release to follow up the Top Ten success of the reissue of Knight's "Love on a Mountain Top"; this time the first-named track reached No. 19. An airplay staple on American oldies radio stations (though less so than the 1974 Carl Carlton version), Knight's "Everlasting Love" has become a "cult favorite" of the beach music scene. In a 2011 interview, Buzz Cason stated that the Robert Knight original of "Everlasting Love" remained Cason's favorite version of the song: "I just think Robert's was the one [version] that had the magic in it." Charts The Love Affair version "Everlasting Love" was recorded by Love Affair in 1967. According to the band's lead vocalist Steve Ellis: "We had two managers, David Wedgebury and John Cokell, who both worked at Decca [and] had access to all the imports on the