What Georgia on My Mind also showed was Charles first major embrace of country music. In these oh so politically correct times, it is nearly an act of subversion for a Black person to say they like the genre(although, like every other musical category under the sun, it has had it's fair share of steaming horsesh*t.) Charles understood it’s symbiotic relationship with gospel insomuch that both were indigenous forms created as means of expression by disadvantaged people, in Country’s case poor whites. Charles’s genius was in his understanding that Bill Gaithers version of Can’t Nobody do Me Like Jesus and James Clevland’s version of the same song are separated by only a couple of chords and clevelands hoarse alto. To Charles, country was part of an indelible part of his history, whose structures and themes go beyond the demagogic dictatorship of racial category.
In 1962 he would take than understanding, along with the wealth of knowledge that he had built along the way, to Olympian heights with Modern sounds of country and western volumes 1 and 2, Charles greatest works and on the shortlist of greatest albums ever made in the history of popular music. Where Charles searched for American music on genius hits the road, he made his stamp in defining it here. The brilliance of the albums lie in the way he grabbed a hold of that rebellious, purist flaunting one size fits all musical sensibility and figuratively took it to Saturn. How else can you explain a cover of Bye Bye Love that fits Benny Goodman, Louis Jordan and the Everly brothers. Or You Don’t Know me fusing Eddy Arnold with Cole Porter. Or I Cant Stop Loving You’s bringing country blues to Billie Holliday. Or You Are My Sunshine, where he take the twang of the song and adds Ellington styled flourishes while taking it to church. Or his adding a sprinkle of Nat King Cole to Hank Williams’ gutwrenching balladry. The enduring theme of the Modern Sounds of Country And Western volumes isn’t that music has no category, but that all music’s categories are under the umbrella of and should be subservient to great art. Both albums are the sound of a gifted man stretching his gifts beyond depths he cant imagine And the result isn’t anything classifiable, but two of the greatest works in the history of American arts and letters.
The last albums of his prime period are just a slight notch below the heights of Modern Sounds, but are powerful subconscious depictions of Charles’ decent into the hell of heroin abuse, a habit that nearly killed him.1963’s Ingredients in A Recipe For Soul has more than it’s fair share of hits but suffers from the lack of Charles’s gospel-jazz-blues-pop piano stylings, as his heroin addiction inabled him to play and took a toll on his voice, making his blues songs (especially lucky ol Sun) have a even more manic quality than usual. But it showed worse in 1964’s Sweet And Sour Tears, another Charles “gimmick” album, only the gimmick was ray telling the world he was fixing to die. A few gems are sprinkled in a album where ray sings smacked out of his mind, depressed beyond repair and with a voice shot from heroin abuse. You initially want to fault Charles for the poor quality of the album, but it’s overall madness and pathos take hold, and taken as a whole it is one of the most underrated R&B albums of all time.
Article comments
1 - Sean
Excellent commentary. Too many people I have talked to think that Ray's genius overcame his country material. I have always thought it was the perfect marriage: great songs interpreted by a master of music.