(The Hit Hammer is where I'm reviewing each #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100. Starting from when the chart started in 1958 and eventually working my way to the present. To see my inspiration and more information about this blog, please refer to the "Poor Little Fool" post.)
Ray Charles - "I Can't Stop Loving You"
Hit Number 1: June 2, 1962
Stay at Number 1: 5 Weeks
Ray Charles' version of "I Can't Stop Loving You" is just one of the over 700 covers of the song. The original version belongs to country artist Don Gibson. In the 1975 book by Dorothy Horstman "Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy", Gibson said that he "sat down to write a lost love ballad. After writing several lines to the song, I looked back and saw the line 'I can't stop loving you.'" He would later recall that he thought "that would be a good title. So I went ahead and rewrote it in its present form."
Gibson's version was released in 1958, and became a pretty big hit for him, with the B-Side being "Oh, Lonesome Me". But even though Gibson is the rightful owner of the song, his version is not the one that most people know today. Ray Charles, who already had two #1 hits prior, covered his song and took it to #1 for 5 weeks, being the longest reigning #1 song of Charles'. Gibson's version is a very lovely country ballad (I'll give it an 8), but it's pretty easy to see why Charles' version reigns supreme. Not only does it feature Charles' soulful voice, but he's accompanied by lush strings, Charles' beloved piano, and the Randy Van Horne singers sing backup on the track. (Here's a fun fact: the Randy Van Horne singers were the ones who supplied the voices on the theme songs for the Flintstones, the Jetsons, and the Huckleberry Hound Show. So if the backup singers on "I Can't Stop Loving You" sound kind of familiar, that's probably why.)
I might even go as far as to say that Charles' version is a near masterpiece. It has so much soul and so much feel to it, you can almost feel the pain of the narrator just listening to his song. The song, of course, is about a guy who is out of a relationship, but still has very strong feelings for the girl he was in the relationship with. He says he'll "just live his life in dreams of yesterday" cause he can't make himself stop loving her. While Gibson's version is still a slow song that can make you feel some sort of pain and sorrow, Charles' version can make you feel that just 10 seconds into the song. It's a very powerful piece of music.
"I Can't Stop Loving You" is not the best of Charles' #1 songs, that would still be "Georgia On My Mind", but it's still a pretty damn good song. It would prove to be Charles' last chart-topper, but he still went on to have an amazing career. He will show up one more time in this blog, cause he's one of the many musicians who had a part in the USA For Africa's "We Are the World". Even without that, he's known to be one the greatest piano players to ever live, and what makes this so much more astonishing, is that he was blind nearly his whole life. People like Ray Charles are very special figures in the history of music.
GRADE: 9/10
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