Review: Ray Charles - The Great Ray Charles (1957)
Tracks: 1) The Ray; 2) My Melancholy Baby; 3) Black Coffee; 4) There’s No You; 5) Doodlin’; 6) Sweet Sixteen Bars; 7) I Surrender Dear; 8) Undecided; 9*) Dawn Ray; 10*) The Man I Love; 11*) Music, Music, Music; 12*) Hornful Soul; 13*) Ain’t Misbehavin’; 14*) Joyride.
REVIEW
I know that it is essentially unfair to compare this record with something like Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio: whereas Paul was anything but a professional classical composer and simply carried out an experiment in an unfamiliar genre (where any a priori chances of success were minuscule even for an aging genius), Ray started out as a jazz musician, albeit always with a pop entertainment angle, and the music recorded on this album was not altogether different from stuff he’d played in bars and town halls for at least half a decade before landing on Atlantic. In other words, he feels totally at home with these instrumental performances, supported by a small jazz band and recorded over three different sessions in New York City. And yet, next to the songs on Ray Charles, this material does not feel more «serious» or «complex» — it just feels... boring.
The thing is, Ray Charles is a great piano player, there is no doubt about it in my mind. But nobody and nothing is great «per se», outside of any context — and just like Chuck Berry was a great guitar player when he played ‘Johnny B. Goode’ but wouldn’t make any sense standing next to Wes Montgomery or Jimi Hendrix, Ray was a great piano player when he used the piano in conjunction with his voice (see my remarks in the previous review on the terrifying dialog between the singing and the playing on a song like ‘Sinner’s Prayer’). He was not a virtuoso; he had little talent for long stretches of creative improvisation; he relied on stock phrasing rather than trying to invent his own — and none of this should come off as a criticism as long as we are talking about his many soul hits (or «deep cuts»). But once we go into the realm of instrumental jazz, Ray Charles is no Thelonious Monk, no Art Tatum, and no Bud Powell. He ain’t even no Fats Waller, whose ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’ was also recorded during those sessions, in a slow, dragged-out, yawn-inducing version.
None of these tunes — mostly instrumental renditions of well-known jazz-pop standards — will be likely to attract your attention. They are passable, mildly enjoyable as background atmosphere while doing chores or old-fashionably relaxing with a glass of wine; turn the volume down a bit and you end up with a perfect accompaniment to Frank Sinatra’s round of stand-up jokes in some Vegas hotel. ‘The Ray’, contributed by none other than Quincy Jones himself, plays out at the beginning as a relaxed 4-minute introductory fanfare but is so smooth and toothless that taking it as some sort of symbolic representation of Ray Charles’ essence is impossible. Perhaps the most telling moment is ‘Sweet Sixteen Bars’, Ray’s own piece which is essentially an instrumental variation on ‘Drown In My Own Tears’ — and is barely listenable when compared to the vocal version: slow, quiet, uninteresting, interminable. What a difference a voice makes.
Of course, not being the hugest jazz fan in the universe, I could not technically explain what is so cool, for instance, about Horace Silver’s original recording of ‘Doodlin’ and what is so hum-hum about Ray’s interpretation (though he must have been proud of it, since he actually put it out as a single). But really, that’s just it: even if Ray’s reproduction of the theme and his own piano solo match up to the original, they certainly do not surpass it or lead it into any particularly interesting and unexplored territory. This is simply not the kind of stuff with which Ray was able to work his magic, and while it is quite commendable that he did try to establish himself as a jazz musician when there was no financial or other pressure on him to do so, it is quite instructive for all of us to see how gloriously (or inglouriously) he failed in this matter.
For the record, those sessions actually produced material for two entire LPs: the second, unscrupulously titled The Genius After Hours, was put together by Atlantic from outtakes already after Ray had left the label — today, most of the tracks that went on it are usually joined with The Great Ray Charles, making for a fairly excruciating one-hour listen with no surprises other than seeing that most of the new tracks are credited to Ray himself (including ‘Joyride’, which is at least fast and lets you evaluate the genius’ skills at playing speedy runs all over the keyboard — honestly, though, I think Amos Milburn and Pete Johnson were more fluent when it came to this stuff).
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