Blogcritics: Comments on Ray Charles sells out

Comment by Brady B.

Wed, 11 Aug 2004 02:14:37 EDT

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!

Comment by Johno

Wed, 16 Jun 2004 10:04:42 EDT

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.

Comment by BRICKLAYER

Wed, 16 Jun 2004 08:52:01 EDT

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!"

Comment by Eric Olsen

Tue, 15 Jun 2004 20:12:44 EDT

"Amazon shills": I certainly spend my days thinking about how I can make life easier for the good folks at Amazon - doesn't everyone?

Comment by Barry Stoller

Tue, 15 Jun 2004 19:41:21 EDT

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.›