I Can't Stop Loving You

June 1962

It's no secret that the great American musical traditions are mostly divided along racial lines. Blues, jazz, and (later on) R&B and rock and roll were products of American blacks, descendants of West African slaves—on the other hand, folk and country music were the domain of whites, descendants of European colonialists. Both groups had their own stories to tell, and both created hugely rich musical traditions, to express themselves. But crossover was always relatively rare, and still is—it's at least rare enough that when it happens, it's notable.

Quick, name a black country singer! Time's up. It's okay, I couldn't think of one either. A cursory web search turned up one Charley Pride, who, for about 15 years starting in 1969, produced a staggering string of country hits (but never broke the mainstream top 10—country music, for all its popularity, has never been the dominant popular form, with the exception of a few crossover hits here and there).

And I can't help but think that someone like Charley Pride owes a huge debt to someone we've covered a couple times before during this project: Ray Charles. The great R&B musician, known for popularizing the sounds of gospel and soul that he grew up with, suddenly blindsided the American public in 1962 with a record called Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. Calling it a "country album" is probably a misnomer—it's filled with blues scales, syncopated rhythms, and jazzy horn sections, not to mention a slick, pop production—but it's country enough to be a noticeably different venture for Charles. But the man himself didn't necessarily consider it such a drastic change. In his own words, "You take country music, you take black music, you got the same goddamn thing exactly."

The record's lead single is the #1 hit in question here, a cover of a 5-year-old country song called "I Can't Stop Loving You."



The song, which tells a familiar story of its subject unable to move past a lost love, was originally written and recorded by Don Gibson, and has been covered by many artists over the years, but most would consider Ray Charles's version the definitive one.

As is often the case with #1 hits, the track is not even all that representative of the album as a whole, or of where Charles was musically at this point in time. But it was the most palatable to the hoi polloi, and so here we are. I'm more partial to the more upbeat numbers, where Charles seems most at home, such as this leadoff track to the album. At any rate, this post was a refreshing departure from the rather long stretch of middling songs I've had to cover lately. It also is the last of the three songs by Ray Charles I'll be covering—his popularity waned as tastes changed gradually throughout the 60s, but he left us with some great stuff.

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