Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music

Charles signed with ABC-Paramount in November 1959, and when he proposed a country album in 1961 he met negative reactions from peers and from ABC executives. A contract renewal in early 1962, tied to the launch of his Tangerine label, cleared the way. Sid Feller researched top country standards through publishers such as Acuff-Rose and Hill and Range and sent around 250 songs on tape to Charles in California, who chose the twelve. Gerald Wilson and Gil Fuller arranged the big band numbers and Marty Paich the strings and chorus, with Hank Crawford on alto saxophone. Charles sent the arrangers voice-and-piano demos, and Feller said that at one point he rewrote a botched arrangement and dictated the parts to each of the 18 backing musicians.

The sessions took place on 5 and 7 February at Capitol Studios in New York and on 15 February at United Western Recorders in Hollywood. I Can't Stop Loving You sits eleventh in the running order because Feller assumed it was the weakest song, and Charles was disappointed with him over the sequencing. The album shipped at least 500,000 copies in its first three months. On 23 June 1962 it replaced the West Side Story soundtrack at number one on the Billboard albums chart, and it reached number 6 in Britain. Four singles charted: Born to Lose at 41, Careless Love at 60, I Can't Stop Loving You at 1 and You Don't Know Me at 2 on the Hot 100.

Billboard called it one of the most intriguing albums in a long time. Robert Christgau wrote that it "transfigured pop, prefigured soul, and defined modern country & western music." It entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, Rolling Stone ranked it number 104 in 2003 and 127 in 2020, and the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry in May 2026. A second volume came six months later. In 2019 Pitchfork's Natalie Weiner noted that the charts had refused to track the music as country and the Grammys had nominated the albums in rhythm and blues categories.