It Was 50 Years Ago Today: “Crying Time” by Ray Charles
March 1, 1966
“Crying Time” by Ray Charles
#1 on the Billboard Easy Listening Singles chart, February 12 – March 4, 1966
At first glance, rhythm & blues and country & western would seem to be complete opposites – not only in sound, but also in the demographics of their audiences. Yet both R&B and country are remarkably similar under the skin, sharing in common song structures, thematic concerns, and raw emotional honesty far removed from the more restrained sounds of traditional pop. Both genres are also music for and by marginalized people, for decades granted little respect by the mainstream pop establishment, who marketed their platters to fringe audiences as “race records” or “hillbilly music.” The affinity between the two seemingly disparate genres reached a peak in the racially divided America of the early ‘60s, when an R&B legend earned his greatest popular success singing C&W songs — and, in the process, helped bring country a little closer to the mainstream.
Ray Charles had spent the ‘40s and ‘50s developing his distinctive flavor of R&B, blending blues, jazz, gospel, Latin rhythms, and traditional pop. So when he released a cover of “I’m Movin’ On” by country star Hank Snow in 1959, it was just one more genre for Charles to conquer — a feat made all the easier by the song’s 12-bar blues structure. The real turning point, however, came with the release of the 1962 LP Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, in which Charles remade 12 “hillbilly” songs in his own unmistakable style. Modern Sounds was a surprise blockbuster hit, not only giving Charles his first #1 album on the pop charts, but also becoming one of the bestselling LPs ever to that point by a black performer, as well as one of the era’s top-selling country music albums.
While Charles had initially earned mainstream stardom through hits like “What I’d Say,” “Hit the Road Jack,” and “Georgia on My Mind,” all of his Top 10 singles after the release of Modern Sounds were covers of songs previously recorded by C&W musicians: Don Gibson’s “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” Eddy Arnold’s “You Don’t Know Me,” Jimmie Davis’s “You are My Sunshine,” Johnny Cash’s “Busted,” and Hank Williams’ “Take These Chains from My Heart.” His last run at the pop Top 10 was one of his biggest departures, but also one of his best-remembered runs at country.
![Ray Charles holding a copy of the Crying Time LP [1966]](http://i0.wp.com/www.rebeatmag.com/wp-content/uploads/cryingtime.jpg?resize=204%2C300)
“Crying Time” was another major hit for Charles, peaking at #6 on the Hot 100 and #5 on the R&B charts, and ranking as the #1 Easy Listening single for three weeks. Yet it also marked the end of Charles’ most commercially successful era. “Crying Time” was his last-ever single to break into the pop Top 10, and its namesake LP became his last album to enter the Top 20 until 2004’s comeback Genius Loves Company. A cross between Charles’ personal problems (including heroin abuse) and changing audience tastes (toward the soul music he helped pioneer) set him on a downward slope for decades. Nevertheless, Charles’ association with C&W never entirely dissipated: in the ‘80s, he signed with Columbia Records specifically to release a run of country albums. As Charles later told interviewer Peter Guralnick, “You take country music, you take black music, you got the same goddamn thing exactly.”
It Was 50 Years Ago Today examines a song, album, movie, or book that was #1 on the charts exactly half a century ago.
