Just Between You and Me

They say time heals all wounds, but Charley Pride ain't buying it. On his first hit single, the country singer holds out hope that the old adage is true, but insists his former love is "too much to forget." Pride's first two singles, "The Snakes Crawl at Night" and "Before I Met You" failed to make the country chart, but "Just Between You and Me" soared to #9 and earned Pride a Grammy nomination for Best Male Country Vocal Performance.

Pride recognized the song's potential immediately and wanted it for his debut single, but producer Jack Clement, who also wrote it, nixed the idea. Pride told Songfacts: "He said he didn't want me singing any gospel song, any love song, and 'I don't want you singing my song because I don't want people thinking I got you here and I'm going to push all of my songs on you.' But when it was my third single and went to #9 and was nominated for a Grammy, that tells me something."

Clement was also concerned about an African American singer performing a love song for the mostly white country crowd in the midst of the Civil Rights Era. "They didn't want me singing love songs at that point because [racists might wonder] who I was singing those love songs to and what color were they?" Pride told Michael Streissguth, author of Voices Of Country: Interviews with Classic Country Performers. "So all of that would dial into the equation, which I didn't kick then and I'm not kicking now because I think they had a point. We weren't even off the ground, but it ended up that all my fans want to hear me sing is love songs."