The birth of soul

Seven remastered mono vinyl albums, recorded 1952-59, released ’57-61, chart the evolution of a new style. By Geoff Brown. The Atlantic Years – In Mono

FIRST RECORDING for the Los Angeles indie Swing Time in 1949, Ray Charles had released some 17 singles with intermittent, moderate success by 1952 when, with the label failing, owner Jack Lauderdale decided to cut him loose. Atlantic bought the 21-year-old’s contract, and for the rest of the 1950s Brother Ray effectively invented soul music, mixing gospel and blues ingredients of his youngest years, adding R&B and jazz notes acquired later, stirring them into a thrilling style that still excites 60-odd years later. The most successful of Charles’s Swing Time/ Down Beat 78s had been cool vocals in a Charles Brown/Nat King Cole vein, but there were pianoled small group or 10-piece band instrumentals too. At Atlantic he developed both styles, but so unimportant was the album market that he didn’t release a long-player for five years, until 1957. Most were compilations of A-sides and Bs – albums were rarely viewed as artistic statements or entities – but the seven here are exceptionally well conceived. Charles’s 1957 LPs unveiled two distinct styles. Ray Charles collects 14 tracks in blues, gospel and R&B: the call-and-response of opener Ain’t That Love; the blues chops of Lowell Fulson’s Sinner’s Prayer (young Ray had been Fulson’s de facto bandleader and pianist); his own Drown In My Own Tears fusing blues and gospel; side two’s glorious uptempo celebrations, from a rapturous Hallelujah I Love Her So through label boss Ahmet Ertegun’s Mess Around, Ray’s witty take on Greenbacks to his own monster closer, I Got A Woman. Concurrent with that, The Great Ray Charles sums up the jazz man. Charles’s incredible voice and songs tended to overshadow his talent as a pianist and his jazz LPs right that wrong. Since 1954, Charles, a big Count Basie fan, had used a bigger road band and soloists like David ‘Fathead’ Newman on saxes and trumpeter Joe Bridgewater excel here. That said, two tracks with just a trio (Black Coffee and Sweet Sixteen Bars) are truly fine and Charles’s use of celeste on I Surrender Dear is a real oddity. Of his three 1958 albums, only Yes Indeed! is included here and its highlights – the heavy, treading beat of Doc Pomus’s Lonely Avenue; the gospel drive of It’s All Right; a zippy Get On The Right Track Baby; and I Had A Dream, as Ray sings around the chanting Raelettes – don’t disappoint. 1959’s The Genius Of… is much-lauded. He sings beautifully on side two, the ballad side, from the heartbreaking Just For A Thrill to Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Cryin’, but some find the ethereal choirs (You Won’t Let Me Go; Come Rain Or Come Shine, with added strings) or poppy intonations (When Your Lover Has Gone) a foretaste of softer days ahead. Also from ’59, and another compilation, What’d I Say, is blacker, with its beyond-classic title track one of the great formative soul songs, jazz, blues and gospel creating a two-part soul masterpiece from its brooding piano intro and “Hey momma don’t you treat me wrong” to the unambiguous vocal exchanges between Ray and the Raelettes. The two-part instrumental Rockhouse, the Nat King Cole echoes of Roll With My Baby, the racy jump blues Jumpin’ In The Mornin’ and the great soul of Tell All The World About You all fit the album’s sheer exuberance. What’d I Say, of course, was a Top 6 US pop hit single in ’59 and prompted Charles’s departure to ABC-Paramount, leaving Atlantic to mop up what sales they could with compilations such as ’61’s The Genius After Hours, seven jazz-blues instrumentals with Ain’t Misbehavin’ slowed to a crawl and the speeding trio piece Charlesville conjuring Art Tatum and Bud Powell. The Genius Sings The Blues, also ’61, is a brilliant finale to the box. Here, in The Right Time, the Raelettes’ repeated “laa-doo-day” refrain sets up Ray’s next comment before Margie Hendricks blasts in with “bay-beee” and the ceiling crashes down. The sombre, regretful I Believe To My Soul and slow, bluesy Hard Times are highlights while Ray’s version of Hank Snow’s I’m Movin’ On, just about the last thing he recorded for Atlantic, was a Top 40 US hit that shows he was channelling country material before the move to ABC. A box of rich, varied, wonderfully vital music that sounds as strong today as it did the day it was recorded, now remastered on 180g vinyl. A couple of curiosities in the packaging, though: The back sleeve of my The Genius Of… is, confusingly, the back sleeve of The Genius After Hours; and in reliable Ray authority David Ritz’s sleevenotes Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Cryin’ appears as ‘Don’t Let The Shine Catch You Shining’ – a touch sloppy on such a pricey item.