Why Ray Charles Matters - Page 3

A volcano bubbling under the surface, Ray spent the mid 50's crafting timeless songs as if there were cars on an assembly Start with the blasphemous fusion of Hallelujah I love Her So and This Little Girl of Mine, where Ray changes the words from loving god to loving a woman, yet, in the intensity of his performance, raises the question if he's still loving the same thing. Then go to the power of Drown In My Own Tears, ray sanctified sermon on romantic heartbreak. If you want more, try the gospel and rockabilly fusion of Leave My Woman Alone, the first inkling of Charles’ master plan to single handedly conquer roots music. Other examples include Lonely Avenue's' backbeat on loan from god, the dizzying rhythm patterns and chord progressions of Aint that Love and Swannee River Rock and the indie spirit and jazz fusion of any of his songs with Milt Jackson .

But that volcano exploded in 1958, on an eruption that can be described in three words: What I say. It starts off with a Hammond organ line that races through your head, then lucid frenetic percussion and then another Hammond line, which builds into an avalanche of the senses, a feast of rhythmic dynamics and one of the most danceable songs in the history of civilization. Then Charles comes in assuming the role as bluesman as wolf. The urgency, the power and the intensity of that voice scream sex, and Charles, the biggest baddest voodoo daddy of them all, evokes a cascade of feelings and emotions, all of them relating the love of booty. It's crescendo, a subversive blending of church stomp and Ray’s orgasmic interplay with the Ralettes, shows the ever thin line between being in the spirit and being with a woman. It's dangerous and powerful, blending heaven and hell to create something that, while not of the church, has a holy air to it. It, you ask again? Soul, Ray Charles' other invention.

But he didn’t stop there! It would have been enough if he had brought a great deal of Black music's history to the masses. But he envisioned black music as something broader than category, he saw it as only part of the beauty of American music history and he would spend 1959-1965 taking staggering musical risks with damm near every single musical genre under the sun. The results were a set of classic albums that would place him the center of the popular music universe. It began with 1959's The genius of Ray Charles, and 1960's Genius +Soul = Jazz, where he matched himself with members with Duke Ellington and Count Basie’s orchestra to gave big band music a much needed shot of soul. But it began to hit a dizzying apex with 1960's The Genius Hits The Road. People often dismiss the album as a gimmick because every song is dedicated to a certain city, but what they fail to see is the soundscapes in every song in relation to the towns he's talking about. From the gospel stomp of Alabammy Bound, to the lush pop of Moonlight in Vermont, to the sly, Fats Waller styled piano licks of Basin Street Blues, Charles isn’t recording a gimmick as much as he is imagining America through music. But even if the album was a gimmick, as Charles purists are likely to tell you, the album would be priceless if only for Georgia on My Mind, the ballad to end all ballads. What strikes me about listening to the song is that every time I hear his performance I hear something new, another layer of feeling in one of his shouts, another emotion in one of his howls. His performance is somehow nothing concrete, yet something always formidable, reminding of what Raymond Deagan, Dennis Haysbert’s character in Far From Heaven, said about abstract art, "That perhaps it's just picking up where religious art left off, somehow trying to show you divinity."

Article Author: Robert Lashley

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