It's hard to imagine what a shock it must have been when Ray Charles released a country & western album back in 1962. Charles made this record against his label's wishes, but it proved to be a critical and commercial success, spending 14 weeks at the top of the charts and launching him even further into the mainstream.The album takes several country & western standards and reinterprets them in several different styles, from r&b and jazz to big band. Personally, I didn't much care for the big band version of "Bye, Bye Love," but that's never been one of my favorites anyway.
This album is considered a landmark in American music, as Charles bended the racial barriers in music by integrating soul and country amid the height of the civil rights struggle. He also became one of the first black musicians to exercise complete artistic control over his own recording career. To put this in perspective, this album was released over a year before Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech.
Even though the album got off to a bad start for me with "Bye Bye Love," it quickly regained its footing with the beautiful version of "You Don't Know Me." That song always makes me want to cry, but I was out for a run, so I held the tears in.
Favorite Tracks: "You Don't Know Me," "That Lucky Old Sun" and "Born To Lose"
No comments:
Post a Comment