[Editor's note: Over the holiday season, SonicNet is looking back at 1999's top stories, chosen by our editors and writers. This story originally ran on Monday, July 12.]

When Pastor Wayne Cochran listens to Pearl Jam's biggest hit, he can't

help hearing a higher power at work.

Decades ago, when he was a Georgia R&B singer known as "the white James

Brown," Cochran wrote the song "Last Kiss," inspired in part by the death

of a 16-year-old girl in a car accident.

It was a hit in 1964, when a cover of the song by Texas group J. Frank

Wilson and the Cavaliers reached #2 on the Billboard pop chart.

"Last Kiss" charted again in 1973, when it was covered by Wednesday, a

Canadian band.

More than a quarter-century later, the author, now a minister, is amazed

to see it climbing the charts again, in a version by a bunch of hard-rockers,

no less.

"You'd have to think in my position that God has something to do with this,"

Cochran said Thursday from his office in his Miami church, the Voice for

Jesus Christian Center. "I mean, why in the world would Pearl Jam record

'Last Kiss'? It's not their type of music" (RealAudio

excerpt of interview).

According to the liner notes of the "Last Kiss" single, Pearl Jam decided

to record the song after singer Eddie Vedder chanced upon a copy of the

1964 version.

"Was that coincidence or is that destined?" Cochran asked. "I don't really

know."

But Cochran, 60, also can see a more earthly reason for the persistent

success of the song, which currently stands at #3 on the Billboard

Hot 100. "I think it's because it's real," he said.

Cochran said he first had the idea for "Last Kiss" (RealAudio

excerpt of Pearl Jam version) when he was living in Thomaston,

Ga., near a treacherous stretch of two-lane rural highway. "There were

two or three accidents a year there and people were always getting killed,"

he said. "It was horrible. ... So I said, 'I'm gonna write a song about

a car wreck.' "

Around 1956–57, Cochran sat down to do so, and he strummed one of

the classic doo-wop chord progressions of the era — C, Am, F, G.

Within half an hour, he said, he had written the vividly descriptive first

verse and the chorus.

For a long time, though, the ending to the song's tragic story line —

a first-person narrative of a boy whose date dies in a car crash —

eluded him.

That changed when Cochran heard the story of 16-year-old Jeanette Clark.

Clark, the sister of Melinda Clark, who was best friend of Cochran's

girlfriend, died in an automobile accident while on her first date. Cochran

remembers the death as occurring only months after he had begun —

and abandoned — the song that would become "Last Kiss," but at least

one historical account suggests the accident actually may have happened

years later, in December 1962.

With Clark's death fresh in his mind, Cochran said, he hit upon the mental

image he needed to finish his song. "I thought of a car turned over ...

headlights shining through the night," he said.

And once he had written the second verse's first couplet — "When I

woke up the rain was pourin' down/ There were people standing all around"

— the rest flowed out almost effortlessly, he said.

The real-life origins of the song's second verse gave the song a new

gravity, Cochran said. "I know I was trying to be very sincere when I

wrote it, because you wouldn't want to do something dishonorable to such

a tragic memory."

There was only one problem. "I couldn't think of nothing to name it,"

Cochran said, laughing. "You can't call it 'where oh where' "

(RealAudio

excerpt of interview).

Instead he took the title from what he calls "the impact point" of the

song, when the narrator embraces his dying lover: "I held her close, I

kissed her our last kiss/ I found the love that I knew I would miss."

Cochran's recording of "Last Kiss," which he said he sold from his car

trunk, pushed the song into the top 10 in Georgia, but it never reached

a national audience. It was left to J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers to popularize the song, in a version that differed little from Cochran's original.

Cochran went on to become a major star in the South, gaining a reputation as a wild live performer and appearing frequently on Jackie Gleason's popular TV variety show.

"He'd jump off the stage, throw chairs around, everything," said Joseph Johnson, the music curator of the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, which hosts an exhibit dedicated to Cochran and "Last Kiss." The exhibit includes pictures of Cochran with two famous friends and fellow Georgians, James Brown and Otis Redding.

Cochran, who was ordained a minister in 1981, still owns the rights to "Last Kiss," although he sold 25 percent of the song when he hit a financial rough spot in the '70s. He has earned a good deal of his livelihood from the song over the years.

Bob Golden, president of marketing for Carlin America, which publishes "Last Kiss," estimated the song has earned at least $1 million in publishing royalties to date. Pearl Jam's version may well bring in another million, Golden said.

Pleased that Pearl Jam are donating their revenues from "Last Kiss" to charities aiding refugees in war-ravaged Kosovo, Cochran is quick to point out that his money is going to a good cause as well. Cochran funnels most of his royalties from "Last Kiss" into his church and its charitable mission, he said.

It's an "awesome feeling" to watch the renewed success of "Last Kiss,"

Cochran said. But the pastor still isn't quite satisfied.

"We gotta get Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin down [to record it] and

make it #1," he said (RealAudio

excerpt of interview).