| The Eternal Kansas City | |
| Cover: | TheEKC.VM.jpg |
| Type: | single |
| Artist: | Van Morrison |
| Album: | A Period of Transition |
| A-Side: | The Eternal Kansas City |
| B-Side: | Joyous Sound |
| Released: | 1977 |
| Recorded: | Autumn 1976/early winter 1977 |
| Genre: | Folk rock, R&B, gospel |
| Length: | 5:26 |
| Label: | Warner Brothers |
| Producer: | Van Morrison |
| Prev Title: | Gloria |
| Prev Year: | 1974 |
| Next Title: | Joyous Sound |
| Next Year: | 1977 |
"The Eternal Kansas City" is a song by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. It was the key song on the 1977 album, A Period of Transition,[1] and was his first single released since "Gloria", in 1974.
Biographer Howard DeWitt believes that the song makes the listener feel as if in a church, because of the "mystical choir", featured at the beginning of the song: "Excuse me do you know the way to Kansas City?". "Then an almost jump arrangement makes 'The Eternal Kansas City' an excellent rhythm and blues influenced song."[2]
Johnny Rogan describes the song as "The only song on the album where there was evidence of Morrison's mysterious majesty, it blended the lily-white sound of Anita Kerr Singers with strong gospel overtones."[3]
Dr John, arranger and musician on A Period of Transition, describes the song as being:
The song that Van got the whole album hooked up around. It was a real deep thing for him to focus on. It goes from a real ethereal voice sound to a jazz introduction and then into a kind of chunky R&B.<ref name=Hinton />