Customer Reviews

Live

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the greatness of this album. Ray was touring with his band in the 50's, and they played as a concent in a stadium it Atlanta. An engineer at one of the radio stations recorded the occasion on a one track tape recorder using a single microphone. The result was issued as an LP, "Ray Charles in Atlanta", and it is one of the most extraordinary albums of all time. First, the recording is technicaly perfect. The band is heard with perfect clarity and balance, and, the audience is also picked up, and you can hear the shouting, whooping, the give and take with the audience, and the extraordinary energy in what was a typical concert of Ray Charles playing to his own audience. Many of the tunes were or became stone classics, known to every funk and blues musician in the country and to most of the population at large. Ray Charles was revered like no other musician.

In the same time frame, Ray Charles took his band to the Newport Jazz festival for what was a controversial appearance. Odd, in that this is one of the greatest jazz bands of all time. Again the proceedings were recorded, and issued as "Ray Charles at Newport". Again, it was an astonishing record. The tunes from these two LP's, ".. in Atlanta" and ".. in Newport" make up this CD. The tunes make up the bulk of Charles' best recorded work. It is some of the most remarkable music America has produced. These are the best records Charles has made.

Why is this music so good? Ray Charles is a vocalist unlike any other. He does not 'sing' a song, he communicates the song to you soul to soul. He drives it into your brain. The tunes on this record are his full effect masterpieces. These include uptempo numbers like "I Got a Woman", "Talking 'bout You", "Tell the Truth", and "What'd I Say", hard driving slow blues like "The Night Time is the Right Time", and the slow show stoppers like "A Fool For You" and "Drown in My Own Tears". Once Dizzy Gillespie played with Ray, and he commented after the gig that he walked halfway across the stage between beats one and two of "Drown in My Own Tears". There are also jazz tunes that the band played to pump the crowd, like "Hot Rod", "Blues Waltz" and "Frenesi". The band was so unique that these tunes constitute their own category, they are straight ahead jazz, but only the Ray Charles band could play jazz this hard driving and funky.

Every tune on this CD deserves comment and analysis. There are no weak sisters. Every tune is a classic. Take for example, "The Night Time..". The sax intro played by David "Fathead" Newman is a classic in itself! The tune is probably the most lowdown blues ever recorded. It is the definition of funk. Marjorie Hendrik's verses are the wildest wild abandon you will hear on record. And when Ray pulls it all together at the end, it is ultimately down and refined at the same time, and also ultimately hard driven and swinging. This is the essence of Ray, the rawest yet at the same time the most nuanced voice, carrying more energy than any other voice but at the same time refined beyond description.

Well, what did you expect? Ray Charles is a genius. That's no jive. This CD is Ray Charles at his best. It is in some ways like a religious screed.

As a junior in high school (Druid Hills), I and several of my classmates attended the radio station WAOK 25th anniversary show at Herndon Stadium in Atlanta (1959). The Ray Charles set was one of many. The show was and remains the best I've ever seen, but the performance by Ray Charles, his band and the Raylettes was without equal. The energy of "What'd I Say", "tell The Truth" and "Night Time Is The Right Time" was incredible. The set was recorded on a WAOK monural tape recorder and later played over the air. The response of the radio audience was overwhelming, resulting in the ultimate release of the Atlantic album (which we bought at the Central Record Shop at 5 points, on the day it was released). We were white teenagers who loved the music played on WAOK (a predominately black station) and even then we realized it was never going to get any better than
Ray Charles on a May 1959 evening. I still can't believe he's gone, but then I crank up "What'd I Say" or "Tell The Truth" and the years melt away...

We all know that Ray Charles is untouchable as the wonderful genius that he is - you don't need me to tell you that. What you might not know is that this splicing together of two live performances contains versions of some of his tunes so good that, if you don't hear them before you die, you'll never have lived, if you see what i mean.
What's more, you should be told that it isn't just me that thinks this: this record was selected recently as one of the '100 soul albums you must own' by MOJO magazine in the UK.
So buy it already.

If you are for an early album of Ray Charles singing live as we conduct a music appreciation lesson of his work in the wake of his death this week, then "Ray Charles Live" takes us back as far as we can go. While this represents two of his first eight albums, 1958's "Ray Charles at Newport" and 1960's "Ray Charles in Person," and the album's sixteen tracks split down the middle between those works, Atlantic has played with the order a bit and it is hard to complain about the results

The first eight tracks were recorded at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 5, 1958, and prove once again that there were few performers as powerful as Charles when he got going. The idea that he was playing R&B and singing gospel is so inadequate to the fusion of those forms that created what we know love as soul music. The standout tracks are "Night Time is the Right Time," the classic "I Got a Woman" (written by Charles and trumpeter Renald Richard), and "Talkin' 'Bout You."

The last eight come from a May 28, 1959 concert in Atlanta where the stand out track, as you would expect, is his thrilling version of "What'd I Say." It has to come last, because there is no place left to go after that one. Before that point the highlights are Charles doing his take on some big band songs, "Yes Indeed!" and "Frenesi." Having two version of "Night Time is the Right Time" is a treat (of course I always see the cast of "The Cosby Show" doing it in my mind's eye every time I hear it). But, wow, how strong this album ends, with "Tell the Truth" and a super slowed down version of "Drown In My Own Tears" before Charles sends the congregation home with "What I'd Say."

No wonder Ray Charles was a popular concert draw for almost half a century of powerful performances. With the tracks from these two early albums you get spirited performances of Charles doing most of the songs that established his reputation and which are pretty much the ones that you want to be listening to this week. When Charles signed with ABC and recorded songs like "Hit the Road, Jack" he was his most popular, but I still think there was more raw power during his early years at Atlantic. This album would just be more proof along those lines.

Ray Charles is the MAN. The performances on this CD are extremely interesting to me. Where was Ray Charles in the early seventies? All he would have needed was a decent guitarist and his popularity would have risen faster than a Highway Star. ;D He doesn't sing about moving, he moves me. This live recording is high intensity rock 'n roll, blues, jazz, and a whole lotta soul. I am overpowered by Marjorie Hendricks when she sings a duet with Ray on THE RIGHT TIME. The performance is uneven, thus 4 stars. Whereas the band seems out of their element on IN A LITTLE SPANISH TOWN, everything clicks like a well-oiled machine on numbers such as BLUES WALTZ where Richie Goldberg drives the train from his drum kit. These seem to be two wild nights. The notes recount the shows, and give helpful tips. SHERRY is a big band number in the style of Count Basie, and again Goldberg gives a forceful performance. "I GOT A WOMAN is given a roaring performance, half of which is improvised over a hypnotic rhythmic current...[Ray] crests the mad waves of rhythm with complete mastery of the art of building and easing tension. He bites on the hard letters and moans through the soft. Newman's famous [saxophone] solo is heard here." If you are interested in great jazz performers of the late fifties, or in an intense live performance, this CD will interest you.

I've owned these albums on vinyl for 40 years now & am used to the order of playing. The CD alters the order to ill effect. "Talkin About You" shouldn't follow "I Got A Woman".
The Atlanta album should end with "Tell The Truth" not "What'd I Say". Nonetheless, these live versions of Charles classics are all inarguably better than the studio recordings. Yes all of them. Yes inarguably.

It's not that he hadn't shown the evidence before the two separate albums that compose this set (issued in a combine first as a two-LP set back in the day) - the original "I Got A Woman" took care of that in 1955 - but if anyone dares to question you, should you tell him or her that Ray Charles was the father of soul music, tie them to a chair and do not release them until the final notes from this set are played and sung. (On the other hand, you may not have to keep them tied up - for one thing, the absolute passion in this music, even in the slower numbers, and it doesn't get any slower than this wrenching remake of "I'll Drown In My Own Tears," might have them busting the bonds anyway...but they won't try to escape.) You can say he improved from here but don't even think about saying he got better - it just doesn't get better than this for Ray Charles. And if anyone tells you Charles ever did a more fervent take of "What'd I Say" than the one he does here, you should tell him that he is more deaf than Brother Ray was blind.

(I write hours after learning Ray Charles is dead at 73. Thank you, Brother Ray, for all those years and all that incandescent music.)

The other reviewers are right, this IS the heart & soul of Ray Charles. I first heard the "Live in Newport" half of this CD in 1959 in northern Sweden.A young Swedish girl played it for me. 100's of times. It shaped the way I hear music, set the standard, especially "The Right Time" and "Tell the Truth". Why did Ray stop making this kind of music? Only explanation I can think of is that he was following the market. To tell the truth, I don't know that many people even today who can really relate to it. The Beatles, yes, but these unbelievable songs, no. Seems they just ain't got soul. So it's to nice hear stories of people with whom this music STUCK. It IS music for a lifetime.

This album has the best live recordings of Ray's classics "A fool for you" and "Drown in my own Tears". Just those two songs are enough reason to buy the album.

This is a combination of two albums one recorded at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958, the other at a Rock Concert at a stadium in Atlanta in 1959 (his set was recorded by one of the DJ's that promoted the show and the sound was good enough to later be put on disc).

There are two good reasons to own this-1.-Drown In My Own Tears (twenty five years ago, Ralph Gleason called it the best live blues recording ever-probably still is. 2. Hear Ray on alto sax (Spirt Feel, Hot Rod)

This is raw Jazz, Soul and blues