Ray Charles (Crossover)
"Thanks for Bringing Love Around Again"

by Michael Lydon


Ray Charles' new CD, Thanks for Bringing Love Around Again, his first since
Strong Love Affair in 1995, opens with "What'd I Say," his 1959 smash hit
transformed by drum machines playing hip-hop beats and synthesizers laying
down big band riffs, but still remarkably like the forty-three year old
original: Ray singing and playing up a storm, and the Raelets squealing
their delight at making musical love with the Genius. Even if you were born
twenty years after its first go round, the new "What'd I Say" will get you
up and dancing.
This self-cover of "What'd I Say" is one of many threads from Ray's past
that bind this richly sensuous album into a tightly compressed ball of
musical energy. As on Ray's classic Tangerine albums from the 70s, all the
tracks of Thanks for Bringing Love Around Again are long--the two shortest
just a hair under four minutes. More than half the twelve tunes are blues,
taking Ray back to his deepest roots. Some of those blues are rockers, some
slow grooves; at every tempo Ray sinks, as always, down into the beat. The
country touches on "I Just Can't Get Enough of You" recall 1963's Modern
Sounds in Country and Western and Ray's Nashville 80s. The poignant title
track brings back the Paris-in-the-rain colors of Strong Love Affair; Ray
sings "Ensemble" in French, a duet with his longtime French lady friend,
Arlette Kotchounian.
Sex is Thanks for Bringing Love Around Again's strongest unifying thread.
The middle seven tracks are paeans to the pleasures of making love, from the
first anticipatory tingles through sweaty passion to delicious hours lying
in bed too spent to move a muscle. The langorous sustained chords of "How
Did You Feel the Morning After," the long, loose beat of "Can You Love Me
Like That?"--this is music of a lover who never tires of the touch of his
woman's body, her smells, her whispers. Ray colors his voice in intimate
bedroom tones, both pleading and triumphant, and the feathery-voiced women
who sing back to him respond with equal fervor.
Billy Osborne, a staff writer for Ray's Tangerine and Racer music publishing
companies, wrote most of the tunes and prepared the basic rhythm and synth
tracks, but Ray picked the tunes to produce, oversaw the arrangements and
every step of production. He's been working on this album since 1997,
spending endless hours at RPM, his Los Angeles studio, mixing and remixing.
Every track bears his inimitable stamp.
At almost 72, Ray is in glorious voice, singing solo, with the ladies, and
with himself in layered choral overdubs. The lyrics are strong and funny.
Does Ray love his woman? Like Romeo loves Juliet, like Ricky loves Lucy,
like "Bill Cosby loves his Camille, Ossie Davis loves his Ruby Dee," and he
admits, "I love you more than the blues I sing," To close "Ensemble" Ray
whispers, "I can't stop loving you, baby."
Ray burns his way through gorgeous synth solos on nearly every track,
packing both his screams of pain and his meditative musings with emotion and
musical invention. Sometimes I wished Ray had his old big band backing him
up instead of Osborne's sampled brass and drums, but the interplay of Ray's
solos against the electronic shimmer creates a captivating fresh-as-paint
modernity.
Thanks for Bringing Love Around Again starts to close with "Mr. Creole,"
written by Renald Richard, a New Orleans trumpet player who led Ray's first
band in 1954 and co-wrote "I Got a Woman" with Ray, his breakthrough hit of
1955. "Mr. Creole" is a mellow blues, flutes playing soft arpeggios over a
walking bass, and tells a mellow story of New Orleans' legendary Mr. Creole
who "might be black or white, rich or poor," but is always a good neighbor,
ready with a cheerful word with you're blue, an invitation to come over for
a bite to eat and a heart-to-heart talk.
A sweet song with a warm message, "Mr. Creole" acts as a prelude to the CD's
climax, "Mother." Anyone who knows Ray Charles knows how often he speaks of
his mother, Reatha Robinson. Reatha died when she was about thirty and Ray
fifteen, but by then she had formed his character on her own flinty
independence. Ray still credits her for rescuing him from blindness by
insisting that he must fetch and carry for himself. "You may be blind, but
you're not stupid," Reatha told her son again and again. She pushed him out
of their tiny Florida town to go to a school for the blind in St. Augustine
where he got a good education and started studying music. "Mother"'s somber
melody and poignant lyrics would move anyone, certainly anyone whose mother
has died. Ray sings every word as a heart-breakingly personal statement: "I
surely still do miss my Mama, doesn't matter how old I grow...no one can
take my Mother's love from me." By the end, the band fades away and a chorus
of Rays sings in mournful a cappella.
A ringing statement by an old master, Thanks for Bringing Love Around Again
touches many of Ray's lifelong themes. Though modern in sound texture, its
music is as old as the blues and steeped in feeling. How many copies will it
sell? Will the world care that Ray Charles has produced a late-life
masterpiece? It doesn't matter. The wisdom of Ray's music goes far beyond
momentary popularity. Long after most current hits have faded, Thanks for
Bringing Love Around Again will still glow with life, sex, and burnished
beauty.