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Ray Charles Filmography
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Ray Charles: Middle years
His first hit in this mode was "Mess Around," which was based on the 1929 classic "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" by Pinetop Smith and written by Ahmet Ertegun, his producer at Atlantic Records. He had another hit with the rap-like urban jive of "It Should Have Been Me," but went into high gear with the gospel drive of "I Got A Woman." (1955) This was followed by "This Little Girl of Mine," "Drown in My Own Tears," "Hallelujah I Love Her So," and "Lonely Avenue," half of them gospel songs converted with secular lyrics, the others blues ballads.
Although Charles was criticized for singing gospel songs with secular lyrics, there is a long tradition of putting religious lyrics to popular songs and
vice versa. See Thomas A. Dorsey, one of the founders of gospel music, who also had a significant career in secular music. Solomon Burke and Little Richard also moved between the two styles.
After an appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival he achieved mainstream success with "(The Night Time is) The Right Time" and his signature song, "What'd I Say." The essence of this phase of his career can be heard on his live album
Ray Charles In Person, recorded before a mostly African-American audience in Atlanta in 1958. This album also features the first public performance of "What'd I Say." It broke out as a hit in Atlanta from the tape, months before it was recorded in the studio in a two-part version with better fidelity.
Charles had already begun to go beyond the limits of his blues-gospel synthesis while still at Atlantic, which now called him
The Genius. He recorded with large orchestras and with jazz artists like Milt Jackson and even made his first country music cover with Hank Snow's "I'm Movin' On."
Then, he did move on, to ABC Records. At ABC, Charles had a great deal of control over his music, and broadened his approach, not on experimental side projects, but with out and out pop music, resulting in such hits as "Unchain My Heart" and "Hit the Road, Jack." In 1962, Charles surprised his new, broad audience with his landmark album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, which included the numbers "I Can't Stop Loving You" and "You Don't Know Me." This was followed by a series of hits, including "You Are My Sunshine," "Crying Time," "Busted" and "Unchain My Heart."
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