Customer Reviews

Modern Sounds In Country and Western Music

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Although I knew that the day would come soon that Brother Ray would pass on, but it still feels like the day came too soon. Ray Charles is one of my most cherished icons on American music. He's done so much! He's taken risks on new ideas even when his advisors were totally against it. This album of "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music" proves that. He was told that a black man shouldn't do country music, but Ray said that it was in his heart to do it. And it worked! It ended up being his best selling album ever! It was the Number One album of 1962 for 14 weeks and remained on the pop chart for 101 weeks (according to Billboard, Record Research by Joel Whitburn).

Many of his most cherished hits are here: "I Can't Stop Loving You", "You Don't Know Me", "Born to Lose", and more, plus this CD features three bonus tracks, which were also charted classics: "You Are My Sunshine", "Here We Go Again", and "That Lucky Old Sun". And although "Georgia On my Mind" would have been an excellent additional bonus track, fitting for this collection, you will find that in his box set once you're ready to commit to that purchase. Although, his five disc box set "Genius and Soul" is a great collection, for those of you who are, only now, interested in hearing what Ray Charles has done for pop music, pick up this CD of "Modern Sounds...". Sure, you may want to get one of his many greatest hits CD's that are available. But, you may want to get his box set afterwards while still wanting to keep this one landmark album.

Yes, I am saddened that Ray Charles has passed on. I feel somber just as we all did when Elvis Presley passed away. I hope we're going to see a great documentary on the life of Ray Charles some day. Since I've already mentioned him, it would be nice if they would get around to releasing the Elvis Presley documentary called "This is Elvis" on DVD someday.

Ray, we're all going to miss you. Too bad Ronald Reagan's passing and week-long rememberance and final funeral stole the attention Ray deserves to celebrate his life. I guess they'll get around to it someday afterwards.

I grew up listening to this album that belonged to my late father. When he was "bar-b-queing" on the patio in the backyard, he'd have his speakers outside from the "Hi-Fi" in the den, and one of the albums he'd play was "Ray Charles, Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music." As kids, our favorite was my Dad's favorites, "Born To Lose" and "I Can't Stop Loving You." The day they announced "Sir" Ray had died, I pulled out that album and played it three times. It still sounds good today. You can't go wrong with the CD.

In 1962 when Country Music could say there still was western music in their genre, Ray Charles did for country music what Elvis Presley (most notably) did for "black music". He introduced it to millions of fans who never listened to country (and western) music. It was and is a classic album. The greatest song to emerge from it was "I Can't Stop Loving You", a song that for country music in those days AMAZINGLY sold a million singles for its composer/singer Don Gibson just 4 years earlier. Also included were songs well-known in country circles, Hank Williams, Sr.'s "Half As Much", "You Win Again" and "Hey, Good Lookin'", "Bye Bye Love" by Webb Pierce, the richest country star of the Fifties, (also done up well by country rockers the Everly Brothers), Floyd Tillman's "I Love you So Much It Hurts Me", Eddie Arnold's (and Lennie Welch's) "You Don't Know Me" and "You Are My Sunshine" from prolific songwriter/singer/Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis. (There was also a beautiful instrumental of the mournful country tune "Worried Mind" by Ray Anthony that hit about the same time as this album; both that song and the oft-recorded "Born to Lose" from 1940 were written by Ted Daffan whose work predated "country music awards" and he's not that famous). An unusually large number of singles (45s) came off the album. They were jukebox favorites. Ray followed up with a sequel album (I own the vinyl) from which singles were released also to become hits into 1963 such as "Take These Chains From My Heart". This is a special piece of music history that you deserve to own. And when Ray sings the songs, they sound heartfelt but a whole lot less hokey. RECOMMENDED HIGHLY.

When Ray Charles moved from Atlantic to ABC, the label expected to get a big selling R&B artist with enough appeal to cross over to pop audiences. Ray at first complied to this narrow view of him and his talents. He started at ABC with big R&B hits as Unchain my Heart. He felt he owed it to the label to give them what they expected. They had just given him an unprecedented contract in which he would keep the rights over his masters and gave him complete artistic freedom. Ray knew his time would come. Soon he made his wish known he wanted to record a record with Country tunes. This idea was met with great apprehension. This doubt in the concept was not without grounds. The R&B world and the country world were at the time still very separate entities. Black artist playing white music was not done in the record industry. Ray went ahead and broke the rules, succeeding marvelously, just as he did when he mixed R&B and Gospel a few years prior.

Yet the record itself is not strictly a crossing between R&B and Country. Ray chose the Big Band approach to the songs. His take of Country was more the classic American Songbook view. Ray was not new to Jazz, having recorded in the medium before. Back at Atlantic he worked with parts of the Basie Orchestra and Quincy Jones on Jazz Standards. So he felt quite at ease here. He wasn't new to Country either. He'd grown up with the Grand Ole Opry shows on the radio and allegedly worked as a piano played in Hill Billy bands down south. His comfort with both styles shines through on this record. Here Charles reworks Hank Williams and Don Gibson classics as You Win Again and I Can't Stop Loving You and creates new rules in the process.

A couple years down the line the mixture of Black and White music would become very common. Record labels as Stax and Hi Records in Memphis build there house styles around in it. Fame studios would excel in it. When Ray dropped this gem on the market it hit like a bomb. Modern Sounds became one of his biggest selling records ever and artistically one of his most compelling.

I bought this album over a year ago and it continues to amaze me. Ray Charles carries a tune in ways that cannot be taught or analyzed- only felt. "You Don't Know Me" and "That Lucky Old Sun" carry a feeling of incredible sorrow while "You Are My Sunshine" is exuberant in its longing. Charles' voice brilliantly complements the Lawrence Welk-style backup singers. His songs move at a pace that will have you rocking in your chair before you know you are doing it. This CD is as emotionally honest and true as any I have heard.

It would foolhardy to get the album "Modern Sounds in Country and Western" and expect Ray Charles to adhere to the strict country sound of the originals which he covers. After all, you're talking about the man who singlehandedly straddled both the pop and R&B charts for much of the Fifties and Sixties by doing his own thing. Instead, Ray brings his trademark style to fifteen great standards, and the results are mixed for more modern listeners. The album as a whole, however, is a must-have.

The record titled "Modern Sounds in Country and Western" is actually an amalgimation of the first such record to be released under that title in 1962, and a selection from the second album that followed later. I'd like to see the second album released in total on CD if it's not already.

Starting off with a swinging, fantastic version of the Everly Brothers' classic "Bye Bye Love" (which Ray now owns pretty much by virtue of this performance, in my mind), the pace slows down considerably for the heart-rending "You Don't Know Me". Followed by "Half as Much" and "I Love You So Much It Hurts", this is a one-two-three punch of the syrupy string and vocal arrangements Charles was branching out into around the time of his label swtich from Atlantic to the more mainstream ABC-Paramount Records. Each song is fantastic in its own regard, and less beholden to the more mellow sound than the following tracks of a similar stripe.

Ray busts through the melancholy with "Just a Little Lovin'", which is easily one of the best tunes I've ever heard. "Born to Lose" is a little hard to take after such an emotional high, but you can easily skip over "Lovin'" if you want to experience it on its own terms. "Worried Mind" suffers from sappy melodrama, as does "You Win Again", but the rest of the record (including the classics "I Can't Stop Loving You", "Hey Good Lookin'", and "Here We Go Again") strike the right balance between the sappy sound of Ray's band and the grit of the originals.

All in all, this will be a bit of a culture shock to anyone born post-Dean Martin, in terms of its exercises in sappy strings and overwrought back-up singers. In some ways, Ray is more at the mercy of the music than vice versa, which leads to some unsatisfying tracks. But on a whole, the album works because it showcases the appreciation Charles had for country and western, and the way he was able to translate this love into a seismacly important album. Far more than just a great record, this album thumbed its nose at the charts and showed what a hit crossover could be for serious artists.

"Modern Sounds In Country and Western" may suffer in some ways for its reliance on the contemporary tastes of 1962. But it works more than often on the strength of the music and Ray's impassioned singing. He was one of those rare talents who actually could sing the phone book and make it enjoyable. Artists like Ray are hard to come by these days, and "Modern Sounds" showcases why.

I was the big age of 21 when I first heard the major song of I Can't Stop Loving You and still find it to be the best work of this song then and even now over 30 years. When I became aware of the album the same feelings figured over this masterpiece of Ray Charles. He deserves the winning of the LIFE ACHIEVEMENT awards for all of his shown originality, talent, taste, and showmanship throughout these years. Thank you Ray! I can't compliment this gentlement enough so I better close only to suggest the public listen to this genuis.

My father made me listen to C & W when I was growing up because it was his record player and his records. Now as an adult, I find myself searching for one album that stuck in my mind all these years, Ray Charles Country and Western. My father would be so proud.

As ever Ray-the Man is ever flexible. He knows his roots only too well. I first heard Ray sing Country and Western years ago on the Album, "The Volcanic Action of My Soul"....Wichita Line Man..was mind blowing....I recently found the reviewed album contained a lot of the tracks I longed to hear again. Multifaceted band, ever brilliant genius...if ever there was a man whose ISness= music then Ray Charles really defies categorization.

Charles was 'fooling around' with the idea of doing some country covers when he did these sessions for ABC. He had no idea (nor did anyone else) that these soulfull, masterful renditions of country standards would cut the original versions and (in the case of "I Can't Stop Loving You") top the charts. This CD is pure mastery start to finish. "You Win Again" and "You Don't Know Me" are given gorgeous, stringed big band ballad treatments, while the Everly's hit "Bye Bye Love" is transformed into a bop/swing jumper featuring a horn section that is primed and hoppin.' This CD is a landmark in music annals, and an essential part of any comprehensive music collection.