Ray Charles sells out
Published June 15, 2004
Famously, Pete Townshend wanted to sell ads on their pre-Tommy album The Who Sell Out. The album was conceived to sound like an underground London radio station. It would have made some sense as an artistic statement, besides the idea of getting PAID. Companies didn't bite though, and the band ended up writing their own faux commercials.
Ray Charles, on the other hand, actually DID sell an ad on one of his records, indeed on one of his songs. He did this not on an obscure B-side of some album, but embedded directly into the track of one of his most renowned recordings, placed on the definitive Genius and Soul box set.
There on disc four is "America the Beautiful," Ray's alternative national anthem. The track is 5 minutes and 21 seconds long. The song actually lasts about 3 minutes and 38 seconds. There are a few seconds of silence, then at about 3:55, it kicks in with Ray singing a whole new song.
I don't actually know for a fact, but I assume that this was a paid ad when he sang "Things go better with a Coca-Cola. Things go better with Coke. Life is much more fun when you're refreshed, and Coke refreshes you best. Oh yes it does. Coke has a taste you'll never get tired of, Coke after Coke after Coke."
This is just plain weird. It's also weird that I've never heard even ONE person mention this phenomenon. There are lots of reviews on this definitive box set, but no one says anything about it, not the professional critics or even the commenters at Amazon. My best guess is that it throws people for such a loop that they just filter it out and ignore it.
Now, I'm a good capitalist, and I mostly defend musicians when they're criticized for doing commercials, but even I can see how this might severely irritate people. "America the Beautiful" was never particularly a big favorite of mine, but I would be really annoyed to hear such a thing attached right to, say, "Strawberry Fields Forever" or Ray singing "I Got a Woman."
Thing is, that this embedded commercial seems so bizarre that it strikes me as a more interesting statement than the song itself. He rolls right into it like any other song, singing about how he knows his woman loves him because she's brought him a Coke.
He's totally committed to the material, and invests it with just as much passion as his national anthem. "America the Beautiful" is a perfectly good sentimental song, but not particularly thought provoking. Ray running these two things together like this, however, is some kind of statement. This seems like some kind of willful statement that's not even about the money.
What that statement is, however, I'm not just sure.
I am sure, however, that Ray Charles Is God at MoreThings.
- Ray Charles sells out
- Published: June 15, 2004
- Type:
- Section: Music
- Writer: Al Barger
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"Amazon shills": I certainly spend my days thinking about how I can make life easier for the good folks at Amazon - doesn't everyone?
I personally feel he did the best work of his career on those Powerball commercials.
"Feels like a winner, feels like a winner, feels like a winner to mi-eeee!"
Al, This is intriguing. I've never heard that particular cut, but it brings to mind someone else: country legend George Jones.
Critics, reviewers, and music scholars have long commented on GJ's capacity for emoting. Not emotion, emoting. Moreover, if you've read his autobiography (any of them), you get the inescapable impression that underneath the surface is a man without a personality, wracked with deep identity issues, and nearly devoid of capacity for introspection. A Chauncey Gardiner, but with an 8-ball and a bottle of Beam.
And yet, when George Jones falls off a note, and his voice flies up in his throat and strangles off the word like a sob waiting to happen, it's the greatest thing country music ever produced. Even some of GJ's best cuts verge on schlock ("He Stopped Loving Her Today", anyone?), and yet he is so committed to the material-- or seems to be-- that he can sell it without blinking.
There's an essay in one of those "Best Music Writing of [year]" books in which the writer discusses just this issue. He closes the piece at a George Jones show, in which George is a little exhausted, in the rock-star sense, and can't remember the words to one of his hits. Between lines, his guitarist feeds him the next one, and George leans back to the mic and delivers the words he's just heard as if they were a cry from the deepest recesses of his heart.
Ditto Ray Charles. I don't really think it's possible to sing a song like "Georgia" for decades on end and not bleed it dry for yourself. Hell, I've been signing Tom Waits' "Downtown Train" for only ten years, I've got the nuances of my performance down, I can play with it, inhabit the song, and sell it like a used car, but after so much time, it's as much craft as it is anything else. I still love the song, but it's become a craft. And yet if the same thing is the case for Brother Ray, you would never tell. Time after time, RC delivered "George On My Mind." Delivered-- hell, he killed it. Ever time.
We already know that Ray Charles is a lot smarter than people gave him credit for, and fiercely independent too. But I never really stopped to consider in what measures Ray Charles was crafty. It's easy to dismiss him, in a way. "Oh, he's a blind black man. O, what sadness! O, what elemental pathos!" I think a lot of people, if they thought about him at all, colored their assumptions about his artistry and songcraft with just that stereotype (not that Ray did a whole lot to fight said stereotype; he probably didn't give a shit). But given the range of his material, his utter mastery of it, the stunning consistency of his public appearances, and the degree to which he worked on establishing his credentials as THE MAN of soul-- all of which equalled by the seeming effortlessness with which he switched gears from Georgia to Pepsi to Coke. Again, this calls to mind George Jones, who could sing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" as though the lamb was dying and Mary was too. The material doesn't matter.
Al, you're right. It is weird, but only because we like to think that when Ray Charles bends that note and cries "oo-ohh-wo-ohowoah!" he means it. At the end of the day, that doesn't matter as much as whether we believe it, but sure is jarring to be made aware of the difference.
OK, here's the story...
It's called a "HIDDEN BONUS TRACK". It's very common, especially on retrospectives and the like.
The Coke jingle and "America The Beautiful" are two completely separate songs. The final track on that disc is "America The Beautiful", correct? Then the song ends. Period. There is a space of several seconds (sometimes there can be as much as five minutes or more of "dead air"!!)
THEN the "new track" begins. It is uncredited on the CD packaging, as it is placed solely for the enjoyment of the dedicated fan...and often because "official clearance" could not be obtained to actually list the track on the package! So it is "hidden" at the end of the disc.
The fact that the Coke Jingle is bumped up against "America The Beautiful" just happens to be unfortunate placement, and nothing more...don't read anything into it about Ray Charles or his "selling out". The truth is that Ray probably didn't even know the Coke jingle was put on the set at all!
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Ho ho, what a great post! Finally, something TOO crass and corporate for Al Barger and the Amazon shills at Blogcritics. I now understand why Reagan thought Ray Charles was OK - this is exactly the sort of cynicism that marked the Reagan 80s.›