Post by erik on Mar 25, 2023 18:45:09 GMT -5
The man known as "The Genius", Ray Charles, is in the Pop Music Hits Spotlight for a huge cover of a long-established C&W hit, done in his inimitable R&B style.
YOU DON’T KNOW ME (Ray Charles; ABC; 1962)—With eighty of his singles reaching the Billboard Hot 100, Ray Charles, alias “The Genius”, was exceeded only by the ninety-one such hits of James Brown, and the 120+ of Elvis Presley. Like those artists, Charles’ style was the height of powerful vocals and oftentimes a mixture of rock and roll, jazz, R&B, blues, and Gospel. But the most audacious move that Charles made during his major chart-making heyday of the late 1950’s and 1960’s was to record two volumes of country and western standards. The first of these, the 1962 release Modern Sounds In Country and Western saw Charles put an orchestral pop/R&B spin on songs that he knew as a child growing up in Jim Crow-era Georgia that were from the writing pens of such acts as Don Gibson, Hank Williams, Floyd Tilman, and other Nashville heavyweights. The idea of a man who was already very much an R&B legend covering the songs of the very same style of music that seemed to advocate that people of Charles’ skin color live under the threat of lynching was considered not only audacious but even outrageous for a lot of people. Outrageous it might have been, but if so, it was an outrageous success as well, going to #1 on Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart, and also spawning a couple of big hits. The first of these was a cover of Gibson’s “I Can’t Stop Loving You”, which topped the Hot 100 for five weeks in the late spring of 1962. The second of these was “You Don’t Know Me”, a cover of a song that country legend Eddy Arnold co-wrote with Cindy Walker in 1955, and which was a big country hit for Arnold. While “You Don’t Know Me” would see many more covers after Brother Ray’s, it was his that managed to peak at #2 in September 1962, as well as #5 on the R&B chart, and #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart. Charles would expand on those country leanings more openly during the 1980’s, but otherwise he would stay exclusively with an approach well within the rock and roll and R&B realms up until his passing in 2004.
YOU DON’T KNOW ME (Ray Charles; ABC; 1962)—With eighty of his singles reaching the Billboard Hot 100, Ray Charles, alias “The Genius”, was exceeded only by the ninety-one such hits of James Brown, and the 120+ of Elvis Presley. Like those artists, Charles’ style was the height of powerful vocals and oftentimes a mixture of rock and roll, jazz, R&B, blues, and Gospel. But the most audacious move that Charles made during his major chart-making heyday of the late 1950’s and 1960’s was to record two volumes of country and western standards. The first of these, the 1962 release Modern Sounds In Country and Western saw Charles put an orchestral pop/R&B spin on songs that he knew as a child growing up in Jim Crow-era Georgia that were from the writing pens of such acts as Don Gibson, Hank Williams, Floyd Tilman, and other Nashville heavyweights. The idea of a man who was already very much an R&B legend covering the songs of the very same style of music that seemed to advocate that people of Charles’ skin color live under the threat of lynching was considered not only audacious but even outrageous for a lot of people. Outrageous it might have been, but if so, it was an outrageous success as well, going to #1 on Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart, and also spawning a couple of big hits. The first of these was a cover of Gibson’s “I Can’t Stop Loving You”, which topped the Hot 100 for five weeks in the late spring of 1962. The second of these was “You Don’t Know Me”, a cover of a song that country legend Eddy Arnold co-wrote with Cindy Walker in 1955, and which was a big country hit for Arnold. While “You Don’t Know Me” would see many more covers after Brother Ray’s, it was his that managed to peak at #2 in September 1962, as well as #5 on the R&B chart, and #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart. Charles would expand on those country leanings more openly during the 1980’s, but otherwise he would stay exclusively with an approach well within the rock and roll and R&B realms up until his passing in 2004.