Ingredients in a Recipe for Soul; No One Does It Like…Ray Charles!; Come Live with Me by Ray Charles
Motown gets the publicity, but there were other African American-owned record labels in the ‘60s-‘70s. Tangerine was launched by the era’s towering star of soul music, Ray Charles. The Ray Charles Foundation is facilitating the reissue of albums he released on Tangerine. Three new ones arrived recently.
Ingredients in a Recipe for Soul (1963) ranks among his finest LPs. Working with a trio of arrangers with roots in jazz—Benny Carter, Sid Feller and Marty Paich—Charles crafted a collection of late big band that segued easily into blues (“In the Evening (When the Sun Goes Down)”) and his soulful take on the sort of melancholy material Frank Sinatra sang so well in the ‘50s (“Born to be Blue,” “A Stranger in Town”). The powerful “Where Can I Go?” implicitly addresses the era’s racial situation (“every door is closed to me,” he sings). Charles transforms “That Lucky Old Sun” and “Ol’ Man River” into soulful hardship songs.
No One Does It Like collects B-sides and non-LP singles from the mid-‘60s and displays a fair measure of his versatility. Charles recorded songs by contemporaries, including a rocking version of Percy Mayfield’s “My Baby Don’t Dig Me” and his Latin-tinged “Hide nor Hair” as well as Doc Pomus’ jazz pop “No One.” Charles draws on gospel for “Without Love (There is Nothing)” and adds a few of his own numbers (“Why You Gonna Love”).
Charles was all over the map on Come Live with Me (1974), executing sweetly orchestrated standards (“Til There was You”), lowkey but intense ballads (“If You Go Away”), pop country (“Come Love with Me”) and one of his own, a secular lyric rooted in the Black church (“Somebody”).
Get Ingredients in a Recipe for Soul on Amazon here.
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