But in the ’60s, it took more than exceptional talent for a Black man to become a country music star. In 1962, pop and soul legend-in-the-making Ray Charles released his landmark “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music,” an album whose first single, a cover of Don Gibson’s 1958 Nashville standard “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” hit No. 1 on the pop and soul charts (as well as in the UK, Australia, and Norway) without troubling the country charts. Although Charles would continue to occasionally record and perform country songs throughout the ’60s and ’70s, he didn’t become a regular on the country charts until the ’80s, and his belated success in the genre probably wouldn’t have happened if Pride hadn’t paved the way for it.
Pride’s debut single, “The Snakes Crawl at Night,” actually followed “Modern Sounds” by four years, and his label, RCA Victor, released it to radio stations under the name “Country Charley Pride” without a photo in order to guarantee the young singer a fair shot in a genre that still had the fingerprints of Jim Crow all over it. In the end, though, it didn’t really matter. Once his identity and race were revealed, Pride rose through the ranks anyway, and by the end of the ’60s, he was en route to becoming one of Nashville’s biggest stars.