Ray Charles - Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music (1962)

Ray Charles - Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music

 

A single yelp and a moment of deafened silence, that’s all you hear before the horns of the exuberant “Bye Bye Love” kick in. Ray Charles starts off Modern Sounds of Country and Western with a bang to deliver a song so buoyant and effervescent it’s hard to believe it used to be an Everly Brothers tune. Charles makes it his own and in a way, he also makes this the definitive version, more powerful and fun that the country chicken scratch of the Everly’s. In fact, he does that with just about every song here, transforming country and western songs that are either limp or lionized into marked Ray Charles songs. The renditions are sweet and moving, embellished with strings and swooning backup singers perhaps best showcased in Charles’ take on “Born to Lose.” In that way the album plays with the conventions of the time in a sort of reverse Stardust; an acclaimed and vivacious black R&B singer who was constantly breaking down barriers, suddenly reversing course and setting his sights on an even bigger rival, white country and western musicians and schmaltzy white crooners. Needless to say, it was hit, changing the course of country music and Charles himself. He had become an interpreter, playing whichever songs he was inclined to in his own way. He would listen to the composition, change the delivery and even the mood of the song, and then dictate his changes to Gil Fuller and Gerard Wilson who handled the arrangements. The jazzy R&B fusion that Charles had become famous for, was used to drive the compositions of the more typical big band arrangements. You can hear Fuller and Wilson’s pulsing bursts prodding along with Charles on “It Makes No Difference Now” and swelling to the brim on Hank Williams' “Hey Good Lookin.’” This song, in particular, being transformed into a much more appealing bookend when compared to Williams' ditty which has permeated culture to the point it’s nearly impossible to hear in its intended charm. Modern Sounds was unbelievably important to the music industry in 1962, it led to country music become more embellished with strings and over-the-top arrangements, it convinced those in the Nashville sound that a black man could have success with country music (even if they themselves did not support it), and it came out during the peak of the Civil Right Era bridging the gap that Americans were feeling between each other and filling Charles’ concerts with as many white people as black people. More than all that though, it cemented the fact that Ray Charles could do whatever he wanted, better than anyone else.

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