No. 1 At Last
With all of the great recordings of “You Don’t Know Me” over the years, it finally reached the top spot on one of Billboard Magazine’s charts. It was the Billboard country singles chart on the day of September 19, 1981. The song “You Don’t Know Me” at last made it to No. 1 by Mickey Gilley.
Mickey Gilley was super-excited when his producer Jim Ed Norman brought the song in. However, he was kind of nervous about it too. He had always loved “You Don’t Know Me”. But, he was really intimidated about trying to cover a Ray Charles performance. Jim Ed reassured Gilley by promising to “make a great record”. With that promise from his producer, Mickey became more at ease and they went to work on it. The two men put their best efforts into the finished product. It paid off when “You Don’t Know Me” became Gilley’s 12th number one country hit. Although he believed he did his best possible job, Mickey still felt that he hadn’t topped the Ray Charles version. In his mind, nobody could.
