When Ray Charles learned last September that he was seriously ill, he decided, against all odds, to finish the duets album that he'd started by singing "Crazy Love" with Van Morrison at a New York concert in June. Ray won this last race against the clock. Genius Loves Company is a masterpiece, a fitting capstone of Ray's fifty-five years of painting sound on plastic.
A warm, intimate album, Genius Loves Company overflows with music both poignant and passionate, earthy and ethereal, glows with every sound color of Ray's wide palette, golden brass and steely guitars, pastel vibes and neon synths, sparkling harps and black-and-white pianos. One track paints a southern sunset, another big city midnight, a third the rainbow robes of a Baptist choir. That Ray weaves his musical tapestry from every strand of American music is a cliche, but still true. The album so mingles jazz, blues, gospel, pop, rock, and country threads that there's no telling where one begins and another ends. Genius Loves Company presents Ray's grand synthesis of American popular music, made all the richer by the other singers' voices resonating with Ray's wise baritone.
"Here We Go Again," a country-soul slow-burner with Norah Jones, gets the album going, Billy Preston playing a translucent organ, a crisp electric guitar keeping an impeccable offbeat over a fat electric bass. Ray and Norah harmonize like honky-tonk sweethearts. The album turns serious with "You Don't Know Me," the country weeper that Ray hit with in 1962, now a jazzy string setting with smoky-voiced Diane Krall. Sombre strings open "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word"--"What do I have to do to make you love me?" asks Ray with quivering vulnerability.
"Fever"'s walking bass and big band brass take us back to finger-snapping 50s jazz, Natalie Cole and Ray sounding like Louis Prima and Keeley Smith. "Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?" a country blues from Ray's Nashville ‘80s, comes enhanced by Bonnie Raitt's sizzling voice and slide guitar. The lyric of "It Was a Very Good Year" felt so right that Ray broke his rule against recording Frank Sinatra songs, but he insisted that Vanacore make the chart for him and Willie Nelson different from Nelson Riddle's original. As years pass by in the song, Victor's music gets denser and more discordant. "Now the days grow short, I am in the autumn of my years," Ray sings in a husky whisper.
On these and following tracks, including a soul-baring "Sinner's Prayer" with BB King, we can't listen without stirred by Ray's guts, his love of life and music, in getting up from his sickbed to create the album. For Ray, creating a sound tapestry from all American music was the means to his greatest goal, touching and being touched by other people. "I want people to feel my soul," Ray told many who asked why he played music. Genius Loves Company is the culmination of his lifelong quest.
©2004 Michael Lydon