Ray Charles’ Impact in “Modern” Country 57 Years Later: A Challenge to Today’s Artists

Dear Aspiring Artists:

We get it. We see you hustlin’ everyday just trying to live your dream of becoming the next Kelly Clarkson. You’re auditioning for American Idol and The Voice on TV. You’re posting videos on YouTube and your Instagram. We pass by you on the streets of Broadway and hear you singing to your heart’s desire in the Nashville honky tonks. And it dawns on us. Unless you are doing a prestigious writer’s round at a place like the Bluebird Café . . . . most of you have a common denominator. You are all singing covers because . . . well. . . that’s your foot inside the Music Row door these days, correct?

NEWSFLASH! Covers are not just for drunken karaoke anymore!

You ever wonder where that started? The popularity of singing other people’s hits to get noticed by the industry? Or even garner a few new sales and fans?

Not only is the “cover song” the magic “key” to the castle here in Millennial Land . . . . but the castle seems to have transparent walls that connect the rooms. Think of each “room” as a genre. You can easily bounce back and forth between rock, pop, R&B, Americana, country. And in today’s technologically advanced studios (not to mention laptops and iPhones), you can use synthetic beats to combine them all at the touch of your fingertips.

But imagine making music in the 50’s and 60s. There were no apps or fancy buttons to push to get the sound you wanted. “Mashup” videos did not exist because YouTube did not exist. Rap artists weren’t duetting with country artists on award shows. Before today’s stadium sell outs were even born, genre pertaining to musical styles was about as segregated as skin color in the South.

So, if you’re an African American jazz and R&B singer and piano player during the Civil Rights Era trying to make a country cover record. . . well, it seems the deck of cards would be so stacked against you, you would probably be better off folding before the game even starts. Right?

Unless your name is Ray Charles, in which case, you played your hand anyway—both hands actually–despite what your label and your peers advised against. Because “Brother Ray” as he was often called, didn’t care about genres, nor did he care what people thought of him recording other people’s hits. His alliance was with the music itself and the passion—for the melody, the message, and the moment. In fact, his whole career was built on pushing boundaries, both musically and socially, as he was a Civil Rights pioneer. And a smart one at that. You see, by the time Ray was wooed to ABC Paramount in 1959 after his Atlantic deal was up, he was in a rare elitist position of artistic control—one of the first black musicians to be given such creds by a mainstream record company.

We know what you’re thinking. “Cool. But what does this have to do with me and my career now?” Plenty. Keep going.

You may have noticed “Brother Ray” recently pop up on your iTunes or Spotify or Amazon under the “New Tunes” tab. And you think to yourself, ‘but he died a few years ago.’ 2004 to be exact. But the music lives on with the February 2019 digital and CD re-release of one of the greatest albums of all time and for the first time, it’s also on streaming services.

With a 14 week spot at the top of Billboard, Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music Volume 1 became the best selling album of 1962, with both the album and the lead single, “I Can’t Stop Loving You” (originally recorded by Don Gibson), earning gold certification status by the Recording Industry Association of America that same year. “I Can’t Stop Loving You” also topped the Pop chart for five weeks and R&B chart for ten, proving what Charles knew all along—good music is good music, no matter what label you give it. Volume 1 was so popular with it’s April release that Volume 2 was rush released just four months later, in September.

Both of these albums forever changed the format of country music, all thanks to the gambling deck played by Ray Charles. Leading up to Charles’ involvement, country in the 50’s appealed primarily to a rural, white audience. Hank Williams, Kitty Wells, and Lefty Frizzell tapped into love, heartache, and drinking with the traditional sounds of the fiddle and pedal steel. By the late 1950’s, RCA producer and manager Chet Atkins led the pop infusion into country along with Owen Bradley and the “A Team” musicians into what became known as “The Nashville Sound”. But when it was Charles’ turn to bat, songs on Volume 1 like “You Don’t Know Me” and “Bye Bye Love” introduced country acts like Eddy Arnold and The Everly Brothers to a new wave of listeners.

But he didn’t just help carve a new valley for country greats for Patsy and Hank. He broke color barriers during the most tumultuous racial time in America and mapped out a new road for future African Americans in the world of boots and cowboy hats. Charles never was considered to be a “country singer” nor did he consider himself one. In fact, there were no black country singers in the 50s and 60s really. But by the 70s, RCA had hit a homerun with a former baseball minor league player by the name of Charley Pride. Pride went on to have 36 #1’s and became one of only three African American country artists to ever be inducted into the Grand Ole Opry; Darius Rucker being one of the other ones of course. And at the rate Jimmie Allen’s career seems to be taking off, he won’t be long behind as an Opry member. So if Pride often gets credit for paving the way for minorities on Music Row, who do you think paved the way for Pride?

A destitute, on his own by the age of 14, blind, African American kid from the South—that’s who. Think you can’t relate? If you’re a dreamer with a hardcore work ethic to match your determined spirit, you might want to reconsider. Ray Charles had everything against him and could have given up before he even began. He was a black child born in Georgia and raised in Florida during the Great Depression to a teenage mother who was impregnated by the married sharecropper she labored for. His father left both Charles’ mother and his wife not long after. That sounds like an episode straight out of the Days of Our Lives script. A lot of Charles’ childhood was spent at a local café, where the café owner befriended Charles’ mother and taught the curious child how to play piano. After the accidental death of his brother at the age of 4, Charles started experiencing glaucoma and was completely blind by 7. His grieving, uneducated mother finally found a school in Florida that would take a blind African American child. He was taught how to read Braille music and continued his piano playing. He learned classical, but was obsessed with the blues, jazz, and country he heard on radio. In fact, he stayed up late some nights just to listen to the Opry on the airwaves, not knowing he would step foot on that stage just a few decades later.

After the unexpected death of his mother, Charles dropped out of school as a teenager and began moving all over Florida, just trying to play music in bands and survive. Seattle came next, where he found some chart success with his own band and friended a then 15 year old Quincy Jones. By 1950, the sunshine of LA shone bright and two years later, so did a contract with Atlantic Records. “I’ve Got A Woman” hit #2 on the Billboard R&B chart in 1954 and the hits kept coming after that. His combination of gospel, blues, and jazz had him headlining spaces like the Apollo Theater in New York and Carnegie Hall. By the time his Atlantic contract was up, ABC Paramount had offered him a generous advance, higher royalties and ownership of his masters, which was almost unheard of at the time, especially for a black artist.

1961 brought “Georgia On My Mind”, “Hit The Road Jack”, and four Grammy awards. And then he decided he wanted to take a detour from his rhythm and blues pathway and journey down the country and western road. People cross over all the time today, but back then, his musical buddies and label execs strongly disagreed. You have to remember. This was during the Civil Rights Movement and the South was anything but “one love”. Even in the “Music City” of Nashville, entertainers like Tina Turner, Jimi Hendrix, Nat King Cole, and Aretha Franklin could play in the restaurants, hotels, and bars downtown in Printers Alley. But they couldn’t eat the food. And they definitely couldn’t stay in the rooms. They had to come back to “their” side of town, otherwise known as Jefferson Street. (That’s a whole other history lesson in itself).

So why? Why would he do it? Why would you mess up something so good for an idea that could flop at the flick of a light switch? Because he’s Ray Charles–that’s why. And because he believed in the greater purpose and that the music could stand on its own, regardless of the state of social affairs or someone’s opinion. After the label finally obliged, his co producer Sid Feller got to work rummaging thru country catalogs largely based in Nashville, to send to Charles, who was in California at the time. In February of 1962, Volume 1 was recorded at Capitol Studios in NYC and United Recording Studios in Hollywood. (Note to artists: sometimes the risk really pays off. Either way, you’re never gonna know if you don’t take it.)

What makes this album so exceptional is that it was so deliberate. Every song was specially chosen because of the emotional connection Charles had to the lyrics and the orchestration he conceived for the melodies. You will not hear songs about trucks and beer cans in the moonlight (and the world breathes a collective sigh of relief). Charles sang about love (literally—some form of the word “love” shows up in five titles between both volumes), heart ache, and letting go. You won’t hear snap tracks, drop beats, and loops (again. . . another collective sigh). You won’t even hear pedal steel. Because Charles wasn’t out to copy anyone. If you didn’t know these were country classics, you wouldn’t know these were country classics. Charles was eager to bring his big band into the studio, so he hired premier jazz arrangers and musicians. He carefully and skillfully instructed the ensemble so that it sounded exactly like he wanted it too.

What a gift he has bestowed upon us with this record, particularly the country music world. In the 70s and 80s, even though the atmosphere had greatly changed, he continued to make music his way, and that included more country albums and duets with friends like George Jones, Mickey Gilley, The Oak Ridge Boys, Ricky Skaggs, Merle Haggard, and Willie Nelson. His version of “Georgia On My Mind” became the state song of Georgia in 1979 and he received a standing ovation on the Opry stage in 1983. He recorded an episode of Crossroads with Travis Tritt for CMT in 2002, where the duo sang each other’s biggest hits.

His death in 2004 at the age of 73 from acute liver disease left a hole in the entertainment industry, but Charles continues to be honored with accolades, buildings, museums, scholarships, not to mention The Ray Charles Foundation. Another foundation, The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, in the heart of downtown Nashville, featured an extensive display in 2006-2007 focusing on the life and impact he had on country and western music. Just last October, today’s chart topping artists got together on the Opry stage for “Songs by Ray Charles”, hosted by Darius Rucker. Boyz II Men, Brett Eldredge, LeAnn Rimes, Chris Young, and Ronnie Milsap were just a few who talked about Charles’ effect on their own careers before serenading the audience with songs like “Unchain My Heart”, “Fever”, and “Don’t Tell Me Your Troubles.”

So dear aspiring artist, remember this. Next time you get a 17th Avenue door slammed in your face or a talent agent tell you you’re not good enough. . . next time you get down on yourself because your rent is still coming out of a tip jar. . . .next time, you think you just can’t write another song that gets put on hold and then ends up not getting cut. Remember that the people who went before you didn’t do it all for nothing. You have a message and a talent that you are meant to share. Remember that true leaders rise out of the depths of the valley. What if little Ray had listened to the kids that put him down in school? What if he had given up after his mama died and succumbed to the fear that maybe he would never “make it”? And what if he had listened to the record execs at ABC and never made that album????

The music scene would look a whole lot different—a lot less vibrant. A lot more structured perhaps.

So when you are in a funk, put down the headphones. Download Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music Volumes 1 and 2. Heck. . . put down the iPhone and go buy it!!! It’s on vinyl now! Close your eyes. Meditate. Sway. Dance in the living room. And send a “thank you” to Brother Ray upstairs.

Dear dreamers, we see you. And more importantly, Ray sees you. With his fast moving hands on the ivories and his Cheshire cat smile lighting up the room, we can’t help but think he’s cheering you on, “my sunshine. My only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray. . . .”

(research courtesy of Wikipedia)*

 

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