Flashes of genius are obvious in retrospect, but it takes a True Gift to be the one who first thought to bring whipped cream into the bedroom. Mix chocolate with peanut butter. Or in Brother Ray's case, take the aching vocal passion of sanctified Southern gospel and weld it to gutbucket, dirty blues. What we take for granted as soul music once horrified pious churchgoers: the Lord's sound with the Devil's backbeat. The scandal! But damn if it didn't hurt so good…
The title really says it all. This reasonably priced, crisply produced, elegantly packaged 3-CD box set is a staggering document chronicling Ray Charles' unprecedented musical growth, from 1952's dusky midnight moanin' blues to 1959's full-on soul boogie. This is musical fusion in the purest sense of the word - a white hot, permanent melding of elements under extreme emotional pressure that lets fly ions of blinding sound.
Naming highlights is nearly hopeless with a collection of this scale and raw human beauty - they don't call it Soul for nothing. This music throbs with unrealized passion, exults in the blush of love and sweats sex from every pore. The invigorating, sparkling ivories and butt shaking groove of "Mess Around", the foreboding piano riff and painfully redemptive vocals of "Sinner's Prayer", the haunting echoes of Charles' tortured voice on "It's Alright", not to mention "I Got A Woman", which is damn near the birth of rock and roll as well.
Ray Charles' vocals are like the voice of God and Everyman rolled in one, the gritty voice of the heart given unequaled power to pierce the soul. You desperately need to hear this music. "Ain't That Love" has a soaring chorus so drenched with palpable love that it brings tears of joy, "Drown in My Own Tears" so beautifully, perfectly melancholy that you'll likely follow the title's lead. And the legendary "What'd I Say", with its visceral organ runs and irresistible rhythms, works itself into a hedonistic sexual frenzy.
Forget Sunday morning - kneel at Brother Ray's altar and ye shall be healed.
- Jared O'Connor
sweatin sex
from every pore