Review: Ray Charles - The Genius Sings The Blues (1961)

Tracks: 1) Early In The Mornin’; 2) Hard Times (No One Knows Better Than I); 3) The Midnight Hour; 4) The Right Time; 5) Feelin’ Sad; 6) Ray’s Blues; 7) I’m Movin’ On; 8) I Believe To My Soul; 9) Nobody Cares; 10) Mr. Charles’ Blues; 11) Some Day Baby; 12) I Wonder Who.

REVIEW

With such a pool of brand new Ray Charles material from ABC Studios literally swamping the market all through 1961, it is ironic, symbolic, and instructive that Ray’s best «new» record of the year would still come out on his old label — and consist of nothing but a chronologically scattered bunch of A-sides, B-sides, and previously unreleased demos and outtakes stretching all the way back to Ray’s very first sessions with Atlantic and stopping right at his very last session for the house that Ahmet Ertegun built. Sure, a record assembled from this sort of scraps is always bound to have its share of second- or third-rate material; but this is Ray Charles safely staying on his natural turf, and this means even the third-rate material is going to be confident and meaning­ful — and, above all, never making you ask yourself that dreaded question, «remind me, why exactly have I chosen to listen to this record of my own free will and accord?» Because this, this is the kind of vibe you are simply not getting from anybody else in the business.

Neither the original pressing nor any of the LP and CD re-issues bothered to properly indicate the recording dates and overall pedigrees for any of the included songs; in fact, the original release even mislabeled some of the titles, presenting the old-time classic ‘Worried Life Blues’ as ‘Some Day Baby’ and T-Bone Walker’s ‘I Got A Break Baby’ as ‘Mr. Charles’ Blues’, crediting the song to Ray himself. (As long as it really was, uh, the blues, who the heck cared back in 1961?). Nevertheless, with a little help from Web sources it becomes clear that the record is (slightly unevenly) divided in two major parts: the «pre-‘I Got A Woman’» Ray Charles of 1952–1953, still struggling to find his own style and mission at Atlantic — and the «late peak era» Ray Charles of 1958–1959, already entertaining thoughts of relocating to a bigger ship than Atlantic.

All of that material is pretty much shuffled at random here, so here’s a good correct track running for you to put your playlist in order, with brief (or not so brief) notes on most of the tracks:

(a) Sept. 11, 1952: ‘The Midnight Hour’ was the B-side to ‘Roll With My Baby’ (previously mentioned in the What’d I Say review), and although it is a super-slow, draggy blues ballad rather than a playful, danceable shuffle like its A-side compa­nion, it still lingers on as a far more memorable song. There’s just something genuinely spooky about that opening deep moan of "the midnight hour... has found me lonely", and something genuinely unsettling about how harmoniously the moanin’ and groanin’ overtones of Ray’s voice and the background horns wash over each other. It’s a good thing that Ray never locked himself into this after-hours nighttime lounge mode of functioning, but he was quite perfect at it before Ertegun managed to push him into dynamic overdrive.

(b) May 10, 1953: ‘Some Day Baby’ = ‘Worried Life Blues’. A sort of random demo take that the Atlantic people probably pulled out by chance. Just Ray and his piano. Cozy and tasteful, but the tempo is a little too upbeat for my tastes — I think the ultimate version of this classic would be produced by The Animals a decade later, with Eric Burdon and Alan Price truly putting the «worried» back into the blues.

(c) Aug. 18, 1953: ‘Feelin’ Sad’ and ‘I Wonder Who’. From Ray’s trip to New Orleans, these are two decidedly old-timey R&B numbers, recorded with a local band led by Edgar Blanchard, whose pleasant, but generic electric guitar is all over both of the tracks, completely overshadowing Ray’s piano. Nothing too special, but Ray still turns in a mighty theatric performance, pretty much bursting into tears on ‘Feelin’ Sad’ as if he did just bury his mother half an hour ago. Some might complain he really overdoes it, but hell, I’ll take a weepin’ Uncle Ray over a ‘Cocktails-For-Two’ Uncle Ray any day.

(d) Dec. 4, 1953: ‘Ray’s Blues’, ‘Mr. Charles’ Blues’ = ‘I Got A Break Baby’, ‘Nobody Cares’. Another New Orleanian session (the same one that yielded ‘Don’t You Know’ for his first LP); two desperate and one optimistic blues numbers that all sound good but just don’t have that really special something — like a monumental, doom-laden piano riff, for instance — that makes ‘Sinner’s Prayer’ such a terrifying masterpiece where all these other numbers are just, uhm, moody. Still, at least the piano is consistently louder on this session, while Ray remains in tip-top vocal form. It’s just that, you know, maybe Ray Charles and New Orleans aren’t really the best possible combination.

Now skip ahead a whoppin’ five years for the remaining five tracks:

(e) Oct. 28, 1958: ‘Early In The Morning’ and ‘(The Night Time Is) The Right Time’. Yes, this marks the first appearance of the original studio recording of ‘The Right Time’ on an LP, but we have already discussed that classic in the context of (equal or superior) live performances, so let me just add that, even if ‘Early In The Morning’ never lives up to the blunt and bawdy impact of its repetitive neighbor (and offers no lead spot to Margie Hendricks, which automatically makes it feel inferior), its weird polyrhythmic structure is certainly something to think about — the song proper is taken at a waltz tempo, but there’s an extra percussion track on top (bongos?) that adds a «disturbing» African ritual vibe, so the whole thing is like a mix of black American blues, white American country, and the primordial tribal spirit. Does it work? Well, it didn’t sell when Atlantic put it out as the first single off the «new» album, so people probably didn’t know well enough what to do of it. I do believe it’s a track that got a little mystery angle to it, as opposed to the in-yer-face declarations of ‘The Right Time’, but, as it so often happens, remain unsure about whether revealing the mystery will lead to enlightenment or not.

(f) Nov. 5, 1958: ‘Hard Times (Nobody Knows Better Than I)’. No mystery here; a self-penned soul-blues tune that should have been one of Ray’s calling cards — as great as any of his big hits for the label and possibly greater than most. The perfect combination of a soothing piano jazz vibe and a depressing blues vibe, with a great memorable chorus hook ("who knows better than I?") and an expert atmospheric build-up over its four verses. Not a ‘Sinner’s Prayer’ — no hellflames licking at the heels of the singer this time, just a masterful transformation of the classic «my whole life’s been one endless bout of suffering from birth to death» blues vibe into something epic and openly spiritual with very limited means (piano, vocal, and a gradually thickening horns section). Honestly, this should have been as big as something like ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ — couldn’t, though, because ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ drops you a hint that things might get better in this lifetime, while ‘Hard Times’ clearly states that "there’ll be no more sorrow when I pass away" and not earlier than that. (Ironically, it ultimately turned out that it was Ray Charles who was the protagonist of ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ and Sam was the hero of ‘Hard Times’, but who could know it back then?).

(g) June 26, 1959: ‘I’m Movin’ On’ and ‘I Believe To My Soul’. The very last session for Atlantic, the last A- and B-side Ray originally recorded for the label, and two of his greatest performances in this whole wide world. As far as Ray’s experiments with country music are concerned, I openly declare that I will take his version of Hank Snow’s ‘I’m Movin’ On’ over the entirety of Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music, both volumes of it — this, as far as I am concerned, is the perfect synthesis of white country & western with African-American soul. Fast, groovy, rockin’, but carefully preserving the seductive slide guitar melody of the original — then, at the end, taking it into pure transcendental spiritual groove territory where the battle cry of "I’m movin’ on!" takes on a whole other significance. Of course, we could always interpret the song as Ray’s own thinly-veiled goodbye to his record label: "I warned you baby from time to time / But you just would not listen / Now pay me no mind... / You’ve broken your vow and it’s all over now / So I’m movin’ on" — poor Ahmet must have been silently biting his lips in the studio corner. But for the non-historian, the performance will simply symbolize one of those «I’m breaking out!» vibes that we all get a craving for from time to time — culminating in that final short jam, when Ray and the Raelettes put that Hank Snow schtick into a rocket ship and shoot it into the stratosphere. This is angry, almost demented rock’n’roll at its purest: across the Atlantic, The Rolling Stones would be the first ones to see to the bottom of it and even crank the dial up a bit in their own live performances (their own version on December’s Children is a mix of bass-heavy proto-metal with ecstatic slide guitar heaven — Uncle Ray must have been proud).

‘I Believe To My Soul’, which many, if not most people, will recognize as the source of Bob Dylan’s familiar piano riff for ‘Ballad Of A Thin Man’ that he almost literally «sampled» from Ray, is unquestionably one of the best songs ever written about anguish and betrayal. I still feel torn between Ray’s original and the sonically and emotionally perfect Animals cover, just because nobody in the world could capture the spirit of Ray Charles and enhance it as the dynamic duo of Eric Burdon and Alan Price could. (Note also, for the record, that the Animals politely removed the original "I think I’m gonna have to use my rod" line from the lyrics, while Uncle Ray, of course, would have no problem with it even all the way through his late-life performances). On the other hand, the Animals don’t have the backing vocals that give the original such an eerie, ghostly feel during the chorus. In short, Uncle Ray was feeling mighty pissed-off that day in the studio, be it in fast rockin’ mode or slow blueswailin’ mode, and we’re all the better for it in the long run.

And there you have it — a crazy mash-up of decent-to-mediocre «old school Ray» with a few untouchable masterpieces from the «peak Ray» phase. Averaging out the score really makes no sense here: anybody could easily do without the (a) to (d) groups (though I do insist that ‘The Midnight Hour’ is a bit of an early highlight), but the (e) to (g) ones are absolutely indispensable to those who want to know more about the foundations of popular music — or, which might be even more important, to those who just want to have themselves a mighty good time. Astonishingly, The Genius Sings The Blues sold far less upon release than The Genius After Hours — either the potential buyers got early wind of the album being more of an outtake compilation than anything else, or, more likely, Atlantic simply did not spend any resources on promoting the record, unlike ABC, who were busy marketing Ray’s jazz and vaudeville albums like crazy. This resulted in at least one good thing — Atlantic decided not to flood the market with any more dreg-from-the-vault releases — but it reflects rather poorly on the fate of little hidden jewels like ‘Hard Times’, though, granted, most people probably get their full servings of Ray Charles not through LPs, but through extensive compilations, most of which will never forget the brilliance of ‘I Believe To My Soul’ or ‘I’m Movin’ On’.

Anyway, the moral of the story is: in 1961, Atlantic-era Ray Charles was still the best Ray Charles money could buy, at least if we were talking in LP terms (after all, he did release both ‘Hit The Road, Jack’ and ‘Unchain My Heart’ on ABC that year). The Genius did a much better job of singing the blues in his regular work time, after all, than when working after hours.

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