The Genius of Ray Charles

Audiophile 180-gram vinyl edition of the legend's classic 1959 GRAMMY-winning LP. Mastered from the original Analog tapes and pressed at RTI. Original album was engineered by Bill Schwartau and Tom Dowd, and supervised by Nesuhi Ertegun and Jerry Wexler. Features Charles' GRAMMY-winning version of 'Let The Good Times Roll,' arranged by Quincy Jones.

Why you'd want to limit yourself to owning just one Ray Charles album is a question only you can answer, but if that's the case, The Genius is a strong contender for the slot. Half big-band settings of tunes as diverse as "Let the Good Times Roll," "When Your Lover Has Gone," and "Alexander's Ragtime Band" and half string-drenched ballads like "Just for a Thrill" and "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Cryin'," this 1959 disc lives up to its title in more ways than there's room here to count. Suffice it to say that the album finds Charles at a peak of musical and emotional energy, working in thoroughly sympathetic settings with perfectly matched soloists like tenor men Paul Gonsalves and David "Fathead" Newman and arrangers on the order of Quincy Jones and Ralph Burns. And the closing cut, "Come Rain or Come Shine," may be Charles's single greatest performance. --Rickey Wright