mrindenver
Active Member
I have a "friendly" retailer who lets me buy Tuesday's releases early, so I pre-ordered and picked up this disc Saturday afternoon.
I mostly cried all the way through it. See, at least on record, Ray and I go back 45 years, since I first "discovered" his genius in the collection of an older brother of a friend (that was the day I first heard Buddy Holly, too).
I won't list the titles that forever altered American popular music; if you know the body of work, such a listing is not needed. If you don't know his late 50s to mid 60s stuff, your education is sorely lacking. Get to it.
Ray Charles changed my white-bread musical experience forever. His hot-weld of sacred and profane, the power of his instrument, and the force of his emotion became the gold standard for me. Don't cha know, baby.
Time and illness are sadly in evidence here. While the emotion is ever present, this is not a disc that showcases Ray's majestic talent. That magnificent voice, as unique and as full of authority as a pipe organ, is weakened, tired.
Like the last few Billie Holiday recordings, this is a portrait of the artist in decline. Indeed, "Sorry" does seem to be the hardest word, right next to "sad".
Interestingly, a live recording/duet of Van Morrison's "Crazy Love" was the spark that set this project in motion. It is the last track on this CD, but it is the only one that, in my opinion, comes close to revealing what Ray was all about. After that session, the studio work for this release was scheduled pretty quickly; there was no shortage of volunteers. But his decline must have been swift from there, burning out quickly like a shooting star, like a comet, like fireworks.
Man, I loved this guy's work. Oh, and the surround mix is quite nice.
I mostly cried all the way through it. See, at least on record, Ray and I go back 45 years, since I first "discovered" his genius in the collection of an older brother of a friend (that was the day I first heard Buddy Holly, too).
I won't list the titles that forever altered American popular music; if you know the body of work, such a listing is not needed. If you don't know his late 50s to mid 60s stuff, your education is sorely lacking. Get to it.
Ray Charles changed my white-bread musical experience forever. His hot-weld of sacred and profane, the power of his instrument, and the force of his emotion became the gold standard for me. Don't cha know, baby.
Time and illness are sadly in evidence here. While the emotion is ever present, this is not a disc that showcases Ray's majestic talent. That magnificent voice, as unique and as full of authority as a pipe organ, is weakened, tired.
Like the last few Billie Holiday recordings, this is a portrait of the artist in decline. Indeed, "Sorry" does seem to be the hardest word, right next to "sad".
Interestingly, a live recording/duet of Van Morrison's "Crazy Love" was the spark that set this project in motion. It is the last track on this CD, but it is the only one that, in my opinion, comes close to revealing what Ray was all about. After that session, the studio work for this release was scheduled pretty quickly; there was no shortage of volunteers. But his decline must have been swift from there, burning out quickly like a shooting star, like a comet, like fireworks.
Man, I loved this guy's work. Oh, and the surround mix is quite nice.
