Best Of Ray Charles: The Atlantic Years CD

Recorded between 1953 & 1959. Includes liner notes by Leo Sacks & Billy Vera.

This is not just a terrific greatest hits package. It's also a revelatory look at the astonishingly rapid development of Ray Charles' music between 1954 (when he signed with Atlantic after a few previous years as a Nat "King" Cole wannabe) and 1960, when he departed for ABC-Paramount for what was at the time one of the biggest advances any artist had ever received.

The distance between the opening "Should've Been Me," a charming, if not particularly memorable piece of journeyman R&B, which Charles sings a la Richard Berry, and the concluding "Just For a Thrill," in which he's recognizably Brother Ray and which pointed the way his music would go in future years, is immense. In between, you'll find the big hits, such as "Hallelujah, I Just Love Her So" and "I Got a Woman," with their revolutionary combination of blues and gospel (the sacred and the profane), as well as fascinating lesser-known tracks like the guitar-driven, bluesy "Blackjack," and a spectacular live version of Lowman Pauling's "Tell the Truth." Great stuff.

Compilation producer: Yves Beauvais.

Personnel includes: Ray Charles (vocals, acoustic & electric piano); Margie Hendrix (vocals); Wesley Jackson, Mickey Baker (guitar); Hank Crawford (alto saxophone); Freddie Mitchell, Pinky Williams, Joe Tillman, Don Wilkerson (tenor saxophone); Dave McRae, Warren Bell, Cecil Payne (baritone saxophone); Wallace Davenport, Frank Mitchell, Joe Bridgewater, Charles Whitley, Joshua Willis (trumpet); Lloyd Trotman, Lloyd Lambert, Jimmy Bell, Paul West (bass); Connie Kay, Oscar Moore, Glenn Brooks, Panama Francis (drums); The Cookies (background vocals); David "Fathead" Newman.

Producers: Jerry Wexler, Zenas Sears, Nesuhi Ertegun, Ahmet Ertegun.

Q (10/94, pp.134-135) - 5 Stars - Indispensable - "...the first and perhaps greatest crossover artist...[evident in his] marriage of church sanctification to blues and jazz--Sunday morning fervor meets Saturday night fever..."