OK, facts first. There’s not a musician alive or dead whose claim to the title ‘maverick’ looks anything but a wan pose next to Ray Charles.
In the southern states of the USA, at a time when musical segregation extended far beyond the classification of blues, soul, gospel and R’n’B as ‘race music’, with black musicians suffering persecution by their own communities, unions and churches for singing ‘profane’ blues and soul music and finding themselves all but unemployable if they didn’t, Charles swung, sung and stomped all over the battle-lines, treating the very idea of musical genres with such disregard it bordered on incomprehension.
And whatever he did – even sparking riots by fusing soul, blues and gospel in the same song – he kept churning out classics. So there’s always room for another compilation. Only this, the label wants you to know, isn’t a mere compilation. No way. This is “the soundtrack to the major motion picture” no less. More precisely, the new, multi-award-chasing Ray Charles biopic.
And as such, it’s something of a disappointment to see that, as in the movie itself, there’s curiously little of the life and times of the man; nothing that could genuinely be called a soundtrack, none of the atmosphere; none of the flavour of his environment. Just the hits. And as with the companion album to Oliver Stone’s Jim Morrison biopic "The Doors", the songs pretty much select themselves. So while you can’t quibble with any of the selections from Charles’ back catalogue – they are the, after all, ones you’ll find on that budget petrol station CD – it’s still somehow hard to love this record.
So we get "Hit the Road Jack"’s contemptuous, dead-eye swing, "Unchain My Heart"’s off-kilter soul, the sexy, soaring, Church-baiting "Mess Around" from 1853, and two takes (live and studio) of the Hoagy Carmichael signature, "Georgia On My Mind", the live one a storming rendition from 1978. All of which are just fine – but even as an introduction to the man and his work, there are better, more balanced (and much cheaper) compilations out there already. There’s a great soundtrack record to be made charting the life and music of Ray Charles, sure. Only this isn’t it.
Damn, as the man would have hollered over a gospel backing.
