Songfacts®:

• "Twenty-Four Hours From Tulsa" was written by the team of composer Burt Bacharach and lyricist Hal David. Their songs were often musically complex with characters who are either conflicted, lovelorn or incorrigible. This one falls into that incorrigible category.
  
  The guy in the song writes a letter to his girl in Tulsa to let her know he won't be coming home. He was driving back from a trip, just 24 hours away, but he met a woman at a motel and has decided to take up with her.
  
  What's galling is how much detail this guy provides, as if spilling his guts about his special night when he gave into temptation will make her feel any better.
• Released on United Artists, this song entered the Billboard Top 100 at #99 week ending October 19, 1963 and peaked at #17 on December 7. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England
• This song has been included on at least 80 albums, over 48 of which are Gene Pitney's version. It has also been covered by Dusty Springfield, Ian and Sylvia, and Chet Baker, among others.
• Singer Gene Pitney was known for his songwriting talents as well as his singing, having penned the hit songs "He's a Rebel" for the Crystals and "Hello Mary Lou" for Ricky Nelson. In fact, his first hit as a singer was a self-penned tune called "(I Wanna) Love My Life Away." He not only wrote the song, but he produced it and played all the instruments on it, as well. It reached 39 on the U.S. Hot 100 in 1961.
• Pitney's collaboration with songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David began in 1962 with "(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance," which was a song written for the John Wayne vehicle of the same name, but was inexplicably never used in the movie. Their collaboration continued on through a handful of songs, including "Only Love Can Break A Heart," "The Fool Killer" and "If I Never Get To Love You."
• In a 1997 DISCoveries interview, Hal David recalled how the song came together: "I wrote that to a melody that Burt wrote and that's what the melody said to me. Music speaks to a lyric writer, or at least it should speak to a lyric writer. And that's what the music said to me. And why it did, I don't know. I don't think I had ever been to Tulsa. I've always kind of liked what I call 'narrative songs' - story songs. And when I hear music, very often I hear a story. The fact that it was Tulsa, as opposed to Dallas, is not terribly meaningful, but the sound of 'Tulsa' rang in my ear."
• This was used in three season 1 episodes of the Stephen King-inspired Hulu series Castle Rock: "Severance," "The Box," and "Filter."
• A year after this song was released, the Billy Joe Royal song "Down In The Boondocks" came out, with nearly identical opening notes.