295: The Rough Guide to Ray Charles: The Atlantic Years, by Ray Charles

Ray Charles (USA)
The Rough Guide to Ray Charles: The Atlantic Years (2017)
23 tracks, 69 minutes
Spotify playlist

During his time signed for Atlantic Records – from 1952 to 1959 – Ray Charles blossomed from a promising jazz and blues singer and pianist to a hero of R’n’B and arguably the inventor of soul music.

As with so many releases in the Rough Guide series (as we’ve covered here and here), this is just a stellar collection. Full marks to compiler (and top-tier music journalist) Nigel Williamson for putting it together, but one has to imagine that this was one of the easier Rough Guides to put together – by focussing on Charles’ eight-year stint at Atlantic, there’s not too much you can do to go astray. It was an incredibly exciting and fertile time for Charles’ music.

In fact, considering his long career, this compilation still manages to feature almost all of his biggest hits. The only two that would be missing would be ‘Hit the Road, Jack’ and ‘Unchain My Heart’, which were both made slightly later, for different labels. That this is a Rough Guide and not a ‘best of’ actually works in its favour, featuring tracks that would not usually get a look in otherwise. Although it only looks at a relatively short period, we get to hear how Charles explored his musical influences, maturing them into his own style and ultimately starting whole movements. We hear him experimenting with his sound, too: in small-band mode with tracks such as ‘What’d I Say?’, ‘Mess Around’ and ‘I Got a Woman’; with a big band for ‘Hallelujah I Love Her So’ and ‘Let the Good Times Roll’; and eventually playing with a full-scale string and wind orchestra like ‘Georgia on My Mind’ and ‘Come Rain or Come Shine’. Nor are these ensembles used ‘just because’; instead, they serve only to heighten whatever emotion is being put across, from the rocking and rollicking piano-based small band stuff to the sentimental orchestral repertoire.

This compilation is so enjoyable and encompasses such a range of styles and approaches despite covering only a few years of Charles’ career that it is hard to argue the assertation that these ‘Atlantic Years’ were also Charles’ musical golden years. If you’re looking for an all-purpose, one-disc set of Ray Charles, you could do a lot worse than this album.