Ray Charles died on 10th June this year at the age of 73.In a 1983 interview with The Washington Post he said: "I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it's a big record, that's the frosting on the cake, but music's the main meal."
By that time Ray Charles had already done more than enough to leave his mark, but in truth the great records had been served up in the fifties and sixties. During that explosive period in popular music Charles was unquestionably a genius. One could even call him that rarest type of musical genius: a genuine alchemist, such was his ability to mix styles to the extent that he established new genres and directions, not least of which was his pioneering blend of gospel, R&B, jazz and blues which he effortlessly forged into that precious golden commodity we call Soul.
Charles was a peerless interpreter of music, managing to take songs from virtually all genres and make them his own. One of his more extraordinarily successful excursions were his variations on Country & Western that kept him in demand well into the eighties from Hank Williams’ “Your Cheating Heart” in 1962 to singing with Hank Williams Jr. twenty years later on ‘Friendship’, an album that also featured a duet with Willie Nelson.
Willie Nelson duets again with Charles on the posthumous ‘Genius Loves Company’ but this time it’s on a track associated with Sinatra: ‘It Was A Very Good Year’. The matching of the singers with a song that spectacularly fails to capture either their individual or combined talent is an indication of the frustration that this album continually induces. Singing with Elton John on ‘Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word’ is another pointless exercise, like John’s guest vocal on George Michael’s version of his own ‘Don’t Let The Sun Go Down’. Can Elton John not do anyone but Elton John?
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Other poor showings include James Taylor, Michael McDonald and Diana Krall, all of whom fail to step up to the mark: Krall in particular sounds totally out of her depth while the others just don’t seem to know how to play off of Charles’ vocal nuances and lyrical emphasis. It’s not just the guests though; the arrangements range from bland to saccharine on many tracks, sounding over orchestrated to the point that the arranger seems to be competing with the singers rather than supporting them.
Luckily some of the other old guard, namely B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, Gladys Knight and Van Morrison salvage some dignity and give Charles a decent last hurrah. But it’s in fact the newest kid on the block, Norah Jones, who really weaves herself into the song and complements her singing partner’s style on the opening track ‘Here We Go Again’. Unlike some of the more experienced singers on the album she shows understanding and awareness of how best to work with Charles, both in her solo vocal sections and in the song’s closing section when they finally sing together.
‘Genius Loves Company’ but many of these guests should have made more of an effort on behalf of their host.
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