From the Greene County, OH library page: “Black artists have been part of the country music landscape since the beginning, with elements of African-American music, like blues, rock and roll, and southern gospel music, woven in. The banjo, an essential Appalachian music instrument, was introduced to the region by black slaves in the early 19th century (source: Smithsonian Music).”
It was probably in 2005, the year he was posthumously inducted, that I first learned about Country Music Hall of Fame member DeFord Bailey (1899-1982). “An influential harmonica player in both country and blues music, … Bailey was one of the Grand Ole Opry’s most popular early performers and country music’s first African American star… He grew up in a musical family that played what he called ‘Black hillbilly music,’ a tradition of secular string band music that drew upon the same core repertoire shared by rural Black and white musicians alike.”
From Opry.com: “Harmonica wizard DeFord Bailey wasn’t merely one of the Opry’s first stars — he was the first musician to perform the Saturday that announcer George D. Hay coined the name of the world’s longest-running radio show that would become famous – the Grand Ole Opry. Bailey, whose tunes helped popularize his instrument in the United States, boasted another first, as well: He was the first musician to hold a recording session in Nashville, setting the stage for a scene that would change the world.”
Listen to Pan American Blues and an album
Ray
The multifaceted Ray Charles released an album in 1962, Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, which became his first album to top the Billboard 200 charts, and it did so for 14 weeks. The follow-up release, Volume Two, got to #2.
Doug Freeman of the Austin Chronicle wrote of Charles’s influence through the album, stating:
Country and soul have always had a tenuous connection, undoubtedly exacerbated by the racial identifications of their respective fanbases. Yet despite the perceived disconnect between the two genres, the populist formats of both have always been more fluid and contiguous than is traditionally recognized. Elvis‘ melding of country and R&B may even arguably be considered the genesis of rock & roll, though that middle ground has largely only served to allow soul and country to remain segregated. With his 1962 Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Ray Charles created the benchmark for crossing the line, highlighting the similarities in sentiment often overshadowed by sound
Ray Charles (1930-2004) was posthumously inducted into the Country Hall of Fame in 2021.
Modern Sounds In Country and Western Music
Charley Pride
The black country artist I remember best growing up was Charley Pride. “During the peak years of his recording career (1966–1987), he had 52 top-10 hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, 30 of which reached number one.
“In the late summer of 1966… he was booked for his first large show, in Detroit’s Olympia Stadium. Since no biographical information had been included with those singles, few of the 10,000 country fans who came to the show knew Pride was Black and discovered the fact only when he walked onto the stage, at which point the applause trickled off to silence. ‘I knew I’d have to get it over with sooner or later,’ Pride later remembered. ‘I told the audience: ‘Friends, I realize it’s a little unique, me coming out here – with a permanent suntan – to sing country and western to you. But that’s the way it is.'”
Charley Pride (1934-2020) was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000.
Listen to Greatest Hits
Others
There are many more black country artists, such as Darius Rucker, formerly of Hootie and the Blowfish. Here are 12 Black artists shaping country music’s future (2021) and 13 Black country artists you need to know (2024). There is some overlap; the latter group includes Shaboozy, whose A Bar Song (Tipsy) dominated both the pop and country charts for weeks.
Beyoncé’s album Cowboy Carter did not receive any nominations at the 58th Annual Country Music Association Awards, presented in November 2024. Still, it won Best Country Album and Album of the Year at the Grammys in February 2025.
Listen to Texas Hold ‘Em
Here are the #1 Hot Black Singles for 1984. The word Hot wasn’t added until October 20, the same week Billboard added it to the Adult Contemporary nomenclature.
Billboard dropped the W designation, as in Western, from its charts in late 1962. So it was the Hot Country Singles of 1964. These topped the charts but did not cross over to lead the pop, RB, or nascent adult contemporary charts.
The odd nature of the Billboard charts is that, for most of the 1950s, there were three different charts each for pop, country, and rhythm and blues categories.
Until I noticed that the country music charts started in 1944, per Joel Whitburn’s Record Research book, Al Dexter was unknown to me. This even though he was a massive star.