“IT WAS MY attempt at gospel blues,” Dave Alvin says of his signature song, “Long White Cadillac.” “I was trying to write something for a recording session that never happened with Lightnin’ Hopkins and the Swan Silvertones. But then I started to write about the last night of Hank Williams’ life. I mixed up a lot of American music in my brain.”
Alvin recorded the tune twice: as a rockabilly rave-up with his former band, the Blasters, on, and again four years later as a slower blues number on his solo debut, . Two years later, Dwight Yoakam recorded a harder-edged take for his album . “It’s had several lives,” Alvin says. “Whichever version you like is up to you.”
