The Career Of Ray Charles Music Essay

The C beer Of tunertherapy Charles symphony Essay glow Charles has been described by some of his contemporaries, Such as Frank Sinatra, who said, gibe Charles is the only genius in the business. I am going to contend to what extent shine Charles contributed to ordinary medicament. diversify grew up alongside twain creed and dry land medicament and was heavily influenced by these deuce genres. I am going to discuss how through his integration of credo and bicycle and blues in releases much(prenominal) as I Got a fair sex helped diversify create his own euphonyal identity but fin all in ally helped to create a whole new medicamental style intelligence. at long last I will discuss how his fusion of flannel boorish music through Modern salutarys in expanse and occidental Music helped to run short barriers and introduced state of matter music to a mainstream audience.Nat King Cole and pianist- calliser Charles Brown, much to convertible style of Cole had a great effect on radiate Charles. dig closely imitated these artists as a teenager and during his time with snub Time Records, headed by Jack Lauderdale. However, for barb too be to a greater extent achievementful he would possess develop his own musical identity. During the fifties shaft Charles would begin to get RB and secularise evangel styles, which would at long last lead to birth of Soul. He would begin to incorporate the chord changes, yell structures, press and response techniques, and vocal screams of gospel. The influence gospel had on radiotherapy is present from an early age. Ray grew alongside perform music and would pick up to Wings Over Jordan and the Golden Gate Quartet. During his time at direct he would regularly sing in a choir and in some(prenominal) case organise his own informal singing group, which would sing rhythmic gospel music.In 1953 Whilst preserve for singer Tommy Ridgeley at the JM Studio, sensitive Orleans, Ray would bunco a couple of tunes subsequently the session. He performed Feeling Sad funeral run into and Guitar Slims and Rays I Wonder Who. His performance is characteristically blues, as ray weeps his mode through the lyrics as horns dr angiotensin-converting enzyme sombre chords. However as Micheal Lydon states that after re- comprehending, Ray opens his voice in baby steps, exploring how to shade his vocal textures. This inscribeing shows that Ray would need to push himself further with his emotional range. Around his birthday after Ray begins to widen his emotional range his friends in New Orleans would nonice a change he began to big(p) the correspondings of a gospel singer. Trumpeter Wallace Davenport recalls The first time I hear him I thought he was Charles Brown, hence he started getting into that church function.As Ray began to incorporate gospel into his music he would listen to gospel wireless and read the Braille bible he carried. Renald Richard explained how Ray loves t he blues singers like Joe Turner, but most of all he love gospel singersHe used to talk about Archie Browne, the lead singer with the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, how much he liked them. He would whence begin to sound like them by turning and fuck off oning virtually with his notes, which would be much to the enjoyment of the audience. Later on in declination 1953 whilst with Atlantic Records, Armet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler would listen to four arrangements Ray had do on communicate station, WDSU. In this you can hear three distinct elements Jazz, Deep colour and fervid Gospel, coming together in an early stage, not a sound which is fully refined but one that sounds like Ray Charles.If in that respect was a single turning point in the go of Ray Charles, it probably occurred on November the 18th 1954 at a radio station in Atlanta. It was here Ray and his recently formed fate would disposition I Got a Woman. This was his first hit Ray had with a gospel influence. In Oc tober 1954, Ray was touring with his first doughnut toward Indianna. Whilst searching the radio stations he would stop when he found a gospel station. Renald Richard remembered vividly a gospel tune that came on with a subject matterfelt groove and started singing. Ray sang something like I got a woman and I answered yeh she lives cross town then shes good to me. Renald then wrote the margin call for the next morning to the satisfaction of Ray. I Got a Woman is an first 16 bar secularisation of My Jesus is all the World to me. Others confuse seen it as a straight rewrite of I Got a Saviour. The stresss Ray had performed before like The Suns Gonna Shine had the hortatory tones of a preacher in the pulpit. I Got a Woman was a preacher at a picnic. Light heartened gospel spiritual joy into sexual delight. It would lift the listener with each of its 4 bar chord change, confirming his optimistic lyrics. besides as the church would joyfully celebrate the glory of God. I got a wo man was a accede for e really happy couple in America, dispirited, white and in- in the midst of.The band first performed I Got a Woman for Ahmet and Jerry as they arrived at the Peacock club in Atlanta. Ahmet described how the power and precision had stunned Jerry. Jerry stated that something fantastic had happened, Ray had hatched, ready for fame. Through immingle gospel with blues, Ray had the first time fused two relentless idioms. In the African-American community the blues and gospel are both part of their culture. However a blues singer didnt sing gospel and a gospel singer didnt sing the blue. It was taboo. galore(postnominal) people believed that it was blue to mix blues with spirituals says Big Bill Broonzy and American blues singer. However, it quickly rose to the top of the charts in early 1955, the achiever of I got a woman being down to good attention from both white and ignominious markets. Before, Ray had recorded vocals like Mess Around by Ahmet Ertegn, which were big in the RB charts but not the white charts. A year after its first recording, Elvis Presley would confirm the impression it made by his own cover of I Got a Woman at RCA. In Jan 1955 Billboard quotes as I Got a Woman as one of the most infectious blues sides to come out since the summer.At the following recording session for Atlantic in Miami. Rays defining sound would be clearly and precisely heard. Ray recorded four charts, two straight blues and two gospel charts. The gospel songs This slim missy of Mine and A Fool For You would reiterate Rays push of his gospel influence. This weensy Girl of Mine is an up tempo shouter with a rhythmic Latin feel based on the gospel song This Little Light of Mine. A Fool For You is a 6/8 geminate time waltz with Rays sanctified singing but without the heavenly lyrics, accompanied by piano gospel licks and preaching horns. Although, like I Got a Woman these two gospel and RB charts was seen as sacrilegious, the mix Ray had c reated appealed to so many audiences across the nation, and introduced a new music that would have a lasting effect, which would be later labelled as Soul music.As the fifties progressed vocal groups following Ray Charles, began to add a sense of urgency and meaning- Soul, to their style of music resulting in the groups of Motown and different(a)s, including groups like the shekels based family band called the Staple Singers who had hit songs which were centred or so Gospel and RB. Their success followed on into the 1970s. In the late 1950s into the 1960s girl groups conjugated male Doo-Wop and RR groups, which resulted in groups like The Shirelles, Marveletess and The Supremes. Their material was largely written by the Brill Building authors and received hit records but never unremarkably lasted.As Ray Charles added the gospel influence to his music, such as the call and response backing vocal groups like the Raylettes so too did Aretha Franklin. She reinfused her female pe rson backing groups with a gospel influence, which are present in her middle 1960s Atlantic recordings. Other artists like James Brown, who started his locomote as a singer with the Gospel Starlighters, following the style of Reverends Julius Cheeks and Claude Jeter added RB to their style. The vocal urgency and syncopated dance rhythms of gospel along with top snick RB house bands came together most clearly in the music of James Brown. Combining a Little Richard- style act with other theatrics from Joe Tex and a pleading version of Ray Charles gospel/ spirit. He then recorded his hit Please, Please, Please.In 1959 Ray released Whatd I Say, a song that became a top ten pop hit and would be one of his last singles with Atlantic before his move to ABC. There are clear gospel influences combined with the sexual innuendo in the song made it not only widely popular but very controversial to both white and black audiences. In the middle of the song. Charles indicated that The Raelettes should reprize what he was doing, and the song transformed into a call and response amid Charles, The Raelettes, and the horn section in the orchestra as they called out to each other in ecstatic shouts and moans and blasts from the horns. This improvised interchange between himself and the Raylettes and between the band and audience is much like that of a Preacher and his congregation. Ray as well as uses gospel dialouge with unuh-uhnnh over charles moans and cries. He also uses phrases like shake that thing and I feel alright, and expression for the body instead of the lord.During Rays early feeling the influence of unsophisticated and western music is ever present. When Ray Charles was suppuration up, the south was full of Country or Hillbilly music. Ray explains how there wasnt a single Saturday night that he wouldnt listen to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio. I loved Grandpa Jones and other characters. I could hear what they were doing and notify the feeling behind it. R ay would listen to Jimmie Rodgers, Roy Acuff, Hank Snow, Hank Williams and later Eddie Arnold. I listened to them all the time, I veritablely dug it and paid it some mind.In 1948 Ray joined a Hillbilly band called the Florida Playboys. It took just one trial to convince the Playboys that Ray could play country music with genuine flavour, and they hired him, no questions asked about race. For seven months he gigged with the band, play current country hits of the day like Kentucky Waltz and Anytime in white honky-tonks in and around Tampa, learning to yodel and singing, Waiting All for You. Even as black, ruse man, Ray was accepted and applauded just like anyone else by the audience. I could play the music right and I could do country music with as much feeling as any other southerner. I had been sense of hearing it since I was a baby. Long before the birth of his own country music, Charles looked back with pride on his stint with the Playboys.Lydon. In an outtake of a 1950s re cording, Ray plays a limpid country lick. The producer chuckles over the studio apartment intercom and says that he didnt know Ray could play Nashville. Ray then replies Man, Didnt you know I gigged with the Florida Playboys His time with the Florida Playboys, though brief would plant a seed in his mind that would rise during the 1960s.After leaving Atlantic Records in 1959, Ray joined ABC and at the end of 1961. He asked Sid Feller to get together 40 country hits from the last cardinal years with the idea to record a country album. Sid Feller had not know at the time that Ray liked County and Samuel Clark and Larry Newton the executives at ABC Records were adamantly opposed to the idea that Charles brought to them. The ABC executives said, You cant do no country-western things.Youre gonna lose all your fans However Feller believed that Ray tacit Country music. He describes how Ray loved the simple plaintive lyrics, and he felt that giving the music a lush treatment would excite it differentModern Sounds in Country and Western Music is a dozen tunes that runs the whole scope of Nashville from the traditional Careless crawl in to the rock and roll Bye Bye Love and from Hank Williams to the B-side fail of I Cant Stop Loving You. The tracks alternate from big band to sop up and voice. However regardless of all the jazz and symphonic effects present, the heart of every arrangement is a simple strummed guitar. Rays bluesy melismas wring every rupture out of the country weepers, all the poetry out of their monosyllabic lyrics. I Cant Stop Loving You has a folk song strength, study scale melody, marching up and down over 3 chords and operatic grandeur created by his baritone voice and orchestra. He also uses his hallmark letting the chorus lead the lyric with his voice following. Ray sings County in his own way, expanding the country sounds without distorting its colour. Rays own blend obscures the fact that Modern Sounds was his boldest album, which breaks many barriers. Invading white country music in the 1960s was something black pop-jazz singers didnt do. You had to be Country in 1962.After Modern Sounds it became a major player in Rays repertoire and on popular music. His unique blend of Country, Pop, Jazz and RB introduced country music to people of the city and showed to record companies and producers how to arrange their music to reach a much wider audience. Ray Charles play a pivotal role in shaping the course of a seemingly very different genre of popular music. In the haggling of his good friend and sometimes collaborator, Willie Nelson, speaking before Charles death in 2004, Ray Charles the RB legend did more for country music than any other living human being. The landmark album that earned Ray Charles that praise was Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, which held at event 1 for 14 weeks and stayed in the charts for 2 years. His single release I Cant Stop Loving You ruled at number 1 on RB and Easy Listening cha rts for weeks in the summer of 1962 dipping to third in July and beginning to fall in august. As Charles told Rolling endocarp magazine a decade later, But Charles recognized the quality of songs like I Cant Stop Loving You by Don Gibson and You Dont have it away Me, by Eddy Arnold and Cindy Walker, and the fact that his version of both of those country songs arrive in the Top 5 on both the pop and RB charts was vindication of Charless long-held belief that Theres only two kinds of music as removed as Im concerned good and bad.Following the massive commercial success and notice of Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, country music experienced an immediate increase in popularity. According to music writer Daniel Cooper, the album raised the genres profile, specifically Nashville sound, of which Charles had cover. Benefiting from this were songwriters, music publishers and country singers who covered the subgenres material. As noted by Cooper, by the end of 1962, Nashville country publishers were being held as the hottest source of music material in the record business these days.Ray Charless success with the stylistic fusion of country and person on Modern Sounds later lead to country soul efforts from performers, such as Candi Staton and Solomon Burke who were both greatly influenced by Charless Modern Sounds recordings. Many country music artists, such as Willie Nelson and Buck Owens, have cited Charless take on country music and Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music as their major influences. In an interview for Country Music Television, Nelson said of Modern Soundss influence that the album did more for country music than any one artist has ever done. Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music has also been perceived by many critics and writers as a landmark album in American music, as the record was the first to blend the two racially distinct genres of country and soul.Ray Charles all-embracing attitude toward music was one that he develo ped during his childishness and early career. Ray was immersed in the sounds of jazz, blues, gospel and country in his youth, playing in RB bands and a Country Hillbilly band. Ray Charles pioneered soul music, which had a great effect on popular music. In secularising certain aspects of gospel music with RB, Ray received his first gospel and RB hit I Got a Woman, which received attention from both black and white audiences. Subsequently, further releases like Whatd I Say and the Hallelujah I fan Her So album attracted a large mainstream audience. His fusion of white country music earned Ray mainstream and crossover success, with his album Modern Sound in Country and Western Music which broke racial stereotypes and clear country music to city dwellers. It also helped other country artists in particular them orientated around the Nashville sound, reach a wider audience, raising the genres profile. To him, the boundaries between those styles of music were made to be crossed, and he made a career out of doing just that having a great effect on popular music.