Word: rayed
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...After four verses of 12-bar blues, the song rollicks into some of Charles? swingin? lounge piano, then returns to the vocal, in a squealing release - ?Say, have you heard, baby/ Ray Charles is in town/ Let?s mess around till the midnight hour/ See what he?s puttin? down? - that prefigures no fewer than three Atlantic songs: Charles? own ?Let the Good Times Roll? and ?Mess Around? and Wilson Pickett?s ?In the Midnight Hour.? The song ends with generic barks (?Come on! Come on, child!?) that are pretty much grunts with consonants. A listener needs no English...
...What?s the difference between religious and sexual ecstasy, between philosophical and emotional anguish? In the First Church of Ray, not much. Several Charles songs were blues adaptations of gospel airs: from ?Talkin? ?Bout Jesus? to ?Talkin? ?Bout You,? from ?This Little Light of Mine? to ?This Little Girl of Mine,? from ?How Jesus Died? to the Doc Pomus composition ?Lonely Avenue.? The first number was Charles? most popular tune thus far; the second was covered, and nicely revamped as rockabilly, by the Everly Brothers; the third (?My covers, they feel like lead/ And my pillow, it feels like stone...
...Anyway, that was the reaction of the kids of 1959, who made ?What?d I Say? Ray?s (and Atlantic?s) first million-selling single. I like to think they responded as much to the musical craft of the piece as to its hedonistic invitation to ?shake that thing.? The song?s break from earlier Charles work was evident from the first note: on an electric piano that sounded like a guitar with a mitten muffling the strings. It was blues, all right, but with a Latin accent, thanks to great cymbal, conga and stick work by Milt Turner...
...success of ?What?d I Say? - Atlantic issued three or four studio and concert versions of the song, including on an album called ?Do the Twist With Ray Charles? - should have led the singer into more, much more of the same. It would, but later. Now he had bigger ambitions (as his label-mate, Bobby Darin, would in segueing from the rockin? ?Splish Splash? to the Sinatraesque ?Mack the Knife?). Charles issued his really-big-band LP, ?The Genius of Ray Charles? (with arrangements by Ralph Burns and the young Quincy Jones). The set teamed him with veterans...
...Then he was gone - away from Atlantic, off to ABC Paramount, for the life of an interpretive rather than creative artist. Ray Charles sings country? Well, why not? He had a smash with ?I Can?t Stop Loving You? - the kind of success that can propel an artist (or at least allow him to cruise) toward a career as a non-hit-producing musical treasure. For the next four decades, he toured, guested on TV shows, earned honors galore, including a Presidential Medal and a charter membership in the Rock ?n Roll Hall of Fame. It was coasting, sure...