I grew up listening to and enjoying country music.  This was the 70's and early 80's.  I am old school.  I am not fond of the modern crossover tween scene.  Carrie Underwood does not have the same feeling of the Dolly Parton songs of my youth.  Tanya Tucker was too risque for my young heart.

 But I loved the music, the emotional, fun, joyful music.  My favorites were Parton, Cash, and Rogers. 

And then I noticed something, as I became a politically aware teenager.  There were no black singers except Charley Pride.  I decided that I like rock and roll better due to some southern rock influences and I made no more of it.

But I looked at the CMA channel the other day, just to see the top 100 songs of the year on late night and I noticed something disturbing to me.

There are no black singers, some musicians, and some video dancers.  So I recorded it, thinking that I just didn't notice them.  And I found something truly disturbing.  Of the hundred best videos of last year, I only saw 4 black performers that were not dancers or video actors.   We are talking about hundreds of people in videos and 100 songs to sort from.

It has been 20 years.  The country just elected a black president.

This means that country music and black people are still not on board with each other.  Other music genres are still not completely integrated, but VH1 and MTV show videos with a good selection of crossover performers and pop music seems to be thoroughly represented by many races. 

I thought it might be a southern thing, but it is not.  Country music has a following that covers the entire country and is only referentially southern.  The most popular modern stars are from all over the country.  Keith Urban is Australian, so it is an international phenomena now.

 So what is going on?  Are country music fans motivating this culture of segregation?  Is it the industry?  Please explain this.

Backstage, Charley is suffering from a cold and drinking mineral water. At 68, he has an air of wary dignity. For the son of a sharecropper, he has plenty to be proud of: as well as winning 31 gold discs and four platinum albums, he played professional baseball in his youth, and has diversified into business, at one stage owning a chain of banks in Texas.

But journalists only ever want to ask what it's like to be The Only Black Man in Country. I start with a couple of softball questions about his Mississippi childhood. He cuts me off: 'You're not going to ask any questions that haven't been asked about 900,000 times - and that's OK,' he says. 'But after all the questions - like the one you just asked and the one you're gonna ask - this is gonna sum it up: American music consists of three basic ingredients: country, gospel and the blues. All are born from one another. If you want to ask about colours and cultures, we could go on and on. But that's the answer.'

Does he get fed up with questions about race? 'I understand why they get asked. But people are so hung up on skin. They're always asking "Why do you look like us and sound like them?" or "Why do you look them and sound like us?"'

Charley's first single, 'Snakes Crawl At Night', came out in January 1966, as the civil rights movement reached its height. I ask if he encountered racism then. 'No,' he replies. 'Because I was never black, never coloured, never Afro-American. I was just always American, an individual.'

His autobiography tells a different story: 'The racial element was always there,' it says. RCA concealed his background and removed his photograph from press kits for his first few singles. Charley is fond of comparing himself to Jackie Robinson, the first black baseball player in the major leagues, but while Robinson opened the way for other African- Americans, Charley remains one of a kind. 'That's not my fault,' he replies. 'I've done what I could to expand the country music audience.'

Before disappearing into his dressing room, he says: 'I don't have the answers. I get tired of being asked "Why aren't there any more of y'all in the business?" You should grab some people in the industry - see if you can get something out of them. They might just not want any more Charley Prides.'

But few record executives are willing to go on record on the subject of country and race. Tammy Genovese, head of the Country Music Association (CMA), tells me: 'The black community's lifestyle is different from what we communicate with country music.' Perhaps the problem is that the industry has failed to reach out to black fans, I suggest. 'We try to market to all types of people,' she says. 'But every culture has its own kind of music, and that is something we can't change. Black people have their own types of music that they like to listen to, be that jazz, hip hop or whatever.'

At a downtown barbeque joint, singer Carl Ray lays the blame with the record companies. 'I perform in places where I'm the only African American and I've never had a bad experience,' he says. 'The problem is not with the fans, it's with the executives - they're trying to go with what's worked before, and they're trying to keep with their job.'