Admittedly, this isn't the greatest Ray Charles concert. The problem, in my opinion, is the year: 1989. By that time, Charles was in "oldies" mode. It would have been better to have something from the 1950s or 1960s, when he was still putting out classic after classic. But this certainly is a capable performance, with excellent sound quality (being a soundboard bootleg). The main reason I'm posting it though is because this recording is very obscure. I searched all over the Internet, and found barely any mentions of it. So I'm hoping that posting it here will make it better well known. Any soundboard boot of a Ray Charles concert demands attention, even from his later decades, because there aren't a ton of them.
The 1980s were a pretty bad decade for Ray Charles' music career. If you look up the albums he put out, they were a disappointing lot, filled with forgettable songs that tried to hard to sound contemporary. But that doesn't matter one bit for this album, because he didn't play a single song from any of his then-recent albums. Instead, it was one classic after another. I think every single song here originally came out in the 1950s or 1960s, except for his acclaimed version of "America, the Beautiful," which is from the early 1970s. His vocals and piano playing were still in top form. This could easily have been mistaken for a concert from many years previous, based on the audio alone.
This album is 51 minutes long.
02 Georgia on My Mind (Ray Charles)
03 Ain't That Love (Ray Charles)
04 Don't You Know (Ray Charles)
05 It Should've Been Me (Ray Charles)
06 talk (Ray Charles)
07 Hit the Road Jack (Ray Charles)
08 Rockhouse [Instrumental] (Ray Charles)
09 Mess Around (Ray Charles)
10 A Fool for You (Ray Charles)
11 I Got a Woman (Ray Charles)
12 Drown in My Own Tears (Ray Charles)
13 What'd I Say (Ray Charles)
14 Ol' Man River (Ray Charles)
15 talk (Ray Charles)
16 America, the Beautiful (Ray Charles)
https://www.upload.ee/files/16235889/RAYCHRLS1989_StteThtrNwYrkCty__5-12-1989_atse.zip.html
The cover photo is from 1989. I don't know the details.
Thanks for all your immense work through all the years - music afficionados all over the world appreciate this. Yesterday I saw the movie "I am a noise" with and about Joan Baez, so I wondered If you have any treasures of this wonderful artist in your boxes ? yours walter
ReplyDeleteThanks. I do have a couple of Joan Baez things. For instance, an unreleased 1965 BBC concert. I haven't even listened to it yet, but I'll try to check it out soon.
DeletePaul,
ReplyDeleteQuite a while back, I sent you a link for a 1960 Ray Charles Concert from the Newport Jazz Festival. I can resend the download link if you did not receive it or have lost track of the email.
Sax and Guitar