Last Time I Saw Him (song)

"Last Time I Saw Him" is a 1973 song by Diana Ross, being a composition by Michael Masser and lyricist Pam Sawyer.

Michael Masser had also composed and produced the precedent solo Diana Ross single "Touch Me in the Morning", a dreamy ballad which had hit #1, but "Last Time I Saw Him" took a drastically different musical direction: AMG would note that on the "arguably campy" last-named track, arrangers Michael Omartian and Gene Page "throw in everything but the proverbial kitchen sink with a score that is all over the musical map from Dixieland-band jazz to banjo-pickin' and even an orchestrated string section",[1] while Billboard would describe "Last Time I Saw Him" as "a light romp in the Tony Orlando and Dawn style.

"[2] The song's narrator recalls how she saw her "honey" off on a Greyhound bus having given the man a large amount of money to establish future living arrangements for the two of them; six months have since passed with no word and the narrator resultantly announces her intention to go in search of her errant swain in the naive belief he has been stranded by some ill-fortune from which she can retrieve him.

Dottie West expediently covered "Last Time I Saw Him" for the C&W market in the January 1974 recording sessions at the RCA Victor Studio in Nashville which resulted in the House of Love album produced by Billy Taylor.

West's "Last Time I Saw Him" reached #8 on the C&W chart in Billboard in February 1974 marking the first time West had scored back-to-back C&W Top Ten hits, her precedent single having been her career record "Country Sunshine"; this success was followed by a progressive drop in West's hitmaking power with her longtime label RCA Victor eventually dropping her in 1976.