Tracks: 1) The Genius After Hours; 2) Ain’t Misbehavin’; 3) Dawn Ray; 4) Joy Ride; 5) Hornful Soul; 6) The Man I Love; 7) Charlesville; 8) Music, Music, Music.
REVIEW
We can keep this one fairly short, since a few of the tracks were already discussed in conjunction with The Great Ray Charles, and there is not much that can be said about this LP in general that has not already been said earlier. Clearly, Ahmet Ertegun was still keeping a close watch on the critical and commercial success of his former biggest star with ABC, and it cannot be a coincidence that The Genius After Hours, consisting of pretty old outtakes from the exact same sessions that yielded The Great Ray Charles back in 1957, was released in the same year that Ray rocked the singles charts with ‘One Mint Julep’ and had a pretty big LP success with Genius + Soul = Jazz as well. Interestingly, the Atlantic executives were not completely clueless in their decision: The Genius After Hours actually sold better than its predecessor, one of those curious rare cases when a record of outtakes finds more recognition than a «proper» record just because it happens to be released at the right time.
Even so, it was hardly a smash, and no individual compositions from it have managed to register in the public conscience. The big advantage of ‘One Mint Julep’ was that it was danceable, a half-jazz, half-pop arrangement of an R&B standard with a main theme that literally propelled you onto the dance floor. Back in 1957, though, those sessions at Atlantic were not about commercial success — Ray was out there to prove to the world that he had what it takes to reach a more sophisticated audience, and, as we know, it didn’t really work exactly the way he’d like it to work: The Great Ray Charles was of little interest to both fans of his R&B hits and «elitist» jazz listeners who (quite correctly) would refuse to line Uncle Ray up with the genuine jazz piano greats of the time. Over the next four years, little had changed: Ray was still revered as an icon of R&B and soul, but hardly along the same lines as Oscar Peterson or Bud Powell.
There is exactly one significant difference between the two albums: all but three of the compositions on The Genius After Hours are credited to Ray himself, whereas The Great Ray Charles only had one original credit (‘Sweet Sixteen Bars’). This makes me suspect that at least some of these numbers might have been simply functioned as spontaneous warm-ups, little bursts of improvisation to tune up the band for the «proper» recordings. Consequently, this is actually a better place to go if you are deeply interested in Ray’s improvisational talent and technique; there are some fairly dazzling runs on fast bebopping tracks like ‘Joy Ride’ and ‘Charlesville’ that should surely squash any complaints about Ray not really being an outstanding piano player — well, he may not be as truly outstanding as the guys who invented that playing style, but he sure took his lessons with all the diligence it requires.
Of the two main covers of the album, I am thoroughly disappointed with ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’, which Ray and saxophone player Emmett Dennis turn into a late-night cocktail-lounge mood piece, vacuuming out all the mischievous cheerfulness of Fats Waller; but Ray does a damn good job on ‘The Man I Love’, finding just the right tempo, tone, and phrasing for his piano to bring out the same potential that Bille Holiday does on her vocal versions. However, this is not a matter of training or technique; it’s actually a matter of soul, and ‘The Man I Love’ gets through here on the same kind of vibe that makes Ray’s piano playing so lovable on his «simplistic» R&B hits. Meanwhile, the pensive improvisation on the slow, bluesy title track is technically more advanced — but feels boring and narcissistic when you give it a close listen.
‘Hornful Soul’ is the only one of these original numbers that sounds carefully pre-written — just because it has a structured main theme, indeed delegated to the horn section in the intro and outro, in between which we still have to bear with four minutes’ worth of piano «doodlin’» (interestingly, I catch a whiff of ‘One Mint Julep’ in a few piano bars every now and then; apparently, Ray must have been a big fan of the song from the moment of its emergence). It’s an okay theme, but I have to say that for the jazz standards of 1961, it must have already appeared pretty outfashioned — and that, in a nutshell, is the biggest problem of the album as such: jazz music had made such tremendous strides from the late Fifties to the early Sixties that outtakes from a 1957 Ray Charles session could hardly be of any value to the world at the time. I mean, in the interval between the official release of The Great Ray Charles (1957) and The Genius After Hours (1961) we had Kind Of Blue (1959) and Giant Steps (1960) — what else can be said here? Even the title of the album gives out a subtle hint that this kind of stuff is probably more of a hobby for «The Genius» than a claim at major artistic relevance.
Only Solitaire reviews: Ray Charles
“I mean, in the interval between the official release of The Great Ray Charles (1957) and The Genius After Hours (1961) we had Kind Of Blue (1959) and Giant Steps (1960) — what else can be said here?”
So, are we to assume you have warmed up to Kind of Blue a bit? I personally have a similar view to yours, but I think it’s an excellent record but like other Miles albums more (Sketches, Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson). Though, Giant Steps is easily the better album of the two if you ask me