Artist	Song
Hoagy Carmichael and His Orchestra	Georgia On My Mind
from Top Hits of the 1930s (2008)
Don Gibson	I Can't Stop Loving You
from RCA Country Legends: Don Gibson (Remastered) (2001)
Louis Jordan	Let the Good Times Roll
from No Moe! Louis Jordan's Greatest Hits (1992)
Nappy Brown	The Right Time
from Savoy Blues 1944/1994 (2003)
Hank Williams	Take These Chains from My Heart
from 20 of Hank Williams' Greatest Hits (1997)
Frankie Laine	That Lucky Old Sun
from The Complete Frankie Laine (2008)
Eddy Arnold	You Don't Know Me
from Pure Gold: Eddy Arnold (1992)
Johnny Cash	Busted
from Blood, Sweat and Tears (1991)
Bing Crosby	You Are My Sunshine
from Bing Crosby: A Centennial Anthology of His Decca Recordings (2003)
Buck Owens	Together Again
from Buck Owens: 21 #1 Hits: The Ultimate Collection (2006)
Hank Snow, The Singing Ranger, And His Rainbow Ranch Boys	I'm Movin' On
from The Essential Hank Snow (1995)
The Clovers	One Mint Julep
from Atlantic Top 60: R&B Grooves (2007)
Ted Daffan's Texans	Born to Lose
from Country: The American Tradition (1999)
Johnny Mercer	Baby It's Cold Outside
from Capitol Collectors Series: Johnny Mercer (1989)
Leon Russell	A Song for You
from The Best of Leon Russell (2011)

Comment:

You might recognize some of these titles from your favorite Ray Charles albums — heck, you might even think he was the first one to record 'em — but all these songs had a very different sound before Ray got hold of 'em. If you think it's weird that Ray had such Country chart success, consider Nova Scotia native Hank Snow, who certainly wasn't Western, but he sure was Country: the high-lonesome whine of "I'm Movin' On" spent a jaw-dropping [i]21 weeks[/i] at #1. Country Music Hall of Famer Don Gibson penned "I Can't Stop Loving You" half a decade before Ray's version topped the charts, and he ladled his creamy, dreamy baritone over an arrangement as plush as a Ritz-Carlton carpet. With a honeysuckle fiddle and a Dixieland oom-pah rhythm section behind him, master songsmith Hoagy Carmichael [i]vo-dee-oh-doh[/i]s his way south of the Mason-Dixon in a song he cowrote, "Georgia On My Mind." From Bing Crosby to Buck Owens, from Louis Jordan to Leon Russell, these are the artists who sang the songs Ray just couldn't [i]wait[/i] to make his own.

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