"You Don't Know Me" is a song written by Eddy Arnold and Cindy Walker in 1955. "You Don't Know Me" was first recorded by Arnold that year and released as a single on April 21, 1956, on RCA Victor. The best-selling version of the song is by Ray Charles, who took it to number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1962, after releasing the song on his number 1 album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. The first version of the song to make the Billboard charts was by Jerry Vale in 1956, peaking at number 14 on the pop chart. Arnold's version charted two months later, released as an RCA Victor single, 47–6502, backed with "The Rockin' Mockin' Bird", which reached number 10 on the Billboard country chart. Cash Box magazine, which combined all best-selling versions at one position, included a version by Carmen McRae that never appeared in the Billboard Top 100 Sides listing. Origin In his book Eddy Arnold: Pioneer of the Nashville Sound, author Michael Streissguth describes how Arnold and Walker composed the song: Cindy Walker, who had supplied Eddy with "Take Me in Your Arms and Hold Me" (a number-one country record in 1949 and Eddy's first Cindy Walker release), recalled discussing the idea for "You Don't Know Me" with Eddy as she was leaving one of Nashville's annual disc-jockey conventions. "I went up to the Victor suite to tell Steve Sholes good-bye," she explained, "and just as I was leaving, Eddy came in the door." Arnold approached Walker with the title of the song: "I got a song title for you... 'You Don't Know Me.'" Walker, in jest, replied "But I know you!" to which Arnold retorted he was serious and proceeded to outline the story he had in mind. Walker promised to take Arnold's story and think about how to turn it into workable lyrics and melody, which eventually came naturally. "The song just started singing. It sort of wrote itself..." The song, in a basic thirty-two-bar form, tells a narrative of a man, who has "never (known) the art of making love," and his friendly encounter with someone he knows but secretly loves—fearing rejection, the narrator never expresses his feelings toward the object of his affections and lets her walk away with another "lucky guy" (this lyric is gender-neutralized when sung by a woman), never knowing if she loves