Ray Charles early stuff from the 50's - WOW

adam2434

I was a casual fan of Ray Charles, but recently I've gotten into his early stuff from the 50's on Atlantic. I did not realize how many of his early songs are some of my favorites that have been covered by other artists.

I'm wowed by his vocals and piano playing on these recordings. As far as I'm concerned, his vocal and piano chops and originality stand up to any contenders in the R&B and Blues genres. I did not know he was so Blues influenced early on. You can hear the influence of Charles Brown, Lowell Fulson, T-Bone Walker, and Guitar Slim (Eddie Jones) on these early tracks. In fact, he worked with some of these cats and covered some of their songs in this period.

You can also hear his own musical voice developing in this period. You can feel the progression of how Blues was sped up into early R&B (which blurs the lines with early Rock and Roll) and then how he added Gospel to form a new sound which became Soul. That probably sounded clich

bobman1235

On a similar note, if you've never seen the movie "Ray", it's both a great movie and a good history lesson about his career and evolution in the industry.

adam2434

Yeah, I've seen bits and pieces of "Ray", but need to rent it in light of this new appreciation.

Another side note is the excellent recording quality of this stuff from the 50's, especially the vocals. A lot of my other favorite music is also from the 50's, including the Blues greats recorded on Chess and Atlantic. There's just something about the the sound of the well-engineered recordings of this era that I love. It's probably the tube mics and simplicity of the mono recordings. Vocals, especially, have such a warmth and presence. In my opinion, in a lot of ways, modern mainstream recording and engineering techniques pale in comparison. Of course great recordings can be made today, but the majority of stuff is just so compressed and lifeless compared to what was being done in the 50's.