Album Reviews

Tony Bennett recorded a live album with Count Basie and his orchestra in Philadelphia that was issued in 1959 by Columbia Records (In Person! Tony Bennett, Count Basie and His Orchestra CS 8104 “6 eye”). In 1961 Peggy Lee released a live album on Capitol recorded at Basin Street East in New York City.

Both albums were really fudges. Due to technical difficulties at the Bennett concert, the entire performance was unusable so it was re-recorded in the studio with crowd sounds recorded at the actual event added to simulate a live concert. Columbia engineers added an annoying reverb overlay to simulate a “live” recording, resulting in a sonic mess. For similar reasons, much of the Peggy Lee album was likewise re-recorded in the studio with crowd sounds added.

This Ray Charles/Count Basie Orchestra album wasn’t recorded live and re-recorded in the studio. In fact the concert never happened! John Burk, head of A&R for Concord records was rummaging through the huge, recently purchased Fantasy catalog, when he came across one marked “Ray Charles and Count Basie,” part of the Norman Granz collection obtained when Fantasy bought Pablo Records.

The tape contained separate performances by Ray Charles and his Orchestra and the Count and his recorded during the 1970’s in Germany. As fate would have it, the Ray recording was un-releasable due to a particularly poor recording of the orchestra, but Ray’s voice, taken from the board mix, was both well-recorded and capable of being separated from the orchestra.

Burk, who’d worked with Charles on the duet album Genius Loves Company assembled a team and began preparing the vocal recordings for placement over new orchestral recordings by the Count Basie Orchestra, with arrangements based on Ray’s originals but “Basie-fied.” There was, as the liner notes point out, a precedent: Ray’s not-to-be-missed 1961 release Genius+Soul=Jazz (Impulse A-2) album, on which Ray sang and played organ backed by members of the Basie band, minus the Count, with “Basie-fied” arrangements by Quincy Jones and Ralph Burns. Ray was all of 29 years old when it was recorded.

Ray was in his ‘40s when the vocals for this album were recorded and of course he was no longer with us when the new arrangements were written (variously by Shelly Berg, Roger Neumann, Tom Scott, Quincy Jones and others), and recorded for this album, during the winter and spring of 2006 at Capitol Studios, with Patti Austin writing the vocal arrangements for the “Raelettes” and performing as one of them as well). Joey DeFrancesco plays B-3 on two tracks.

Ray’s repertoire at the time consisted of Broadway and Country standards, some of his standards, and some pop and rock. The mix of tunes includes “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” “Let the Good Times Roll,” “Busted,” “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” “How Long Has This Been Going On,” “Crying Time,” “The Long And Winding Road,” and “Look What They’ve Done to My Song.”

So you get Gershwin, Don Gibson, Buck Owens, Lennon/McCartney, Melanie and Boudleaux and Felice Bryant among others. Eclectic enough? Vinyl buyers get the bonus track “Them That Got” plus swell packaging. SACD buyers (Telarc) get a 5.1 channel Michael Bishop mix that I haven’t heard.

Of course this was all produced digitally using Pro-Tools. Nevertheless, the sound is remarkably fine and does not exhibit the clichéd etch, edge, brightness or the expected “digititis.” What’s lost in terms of burnished warmth, harmonic richness and space is more than made up for by great clarity and even transparency, and that includes, surprisingly, the piano, the cymbals and the horns. Stan Ricker cut lacquers sourced from 96K/24 bit files, so you can expect the vinyl to sound better than the CD version, and for good reason!

More importantly, I swear, you’d never know Ray wasn’t there singing live with the orchestra. You’d never know these great, vibrant Ray vocals were purloined from a poorly recorded German concert tape dating back to the 1970’s. Ray’s “The Long and Winding Road” is alone worth the price of admission.

It’s easy to recommend this to Ray fans but first be sure to find an original LP of Genius+Soul=Jazz. That comes first. But this, surprisingly, doesn’t come that far behind.