The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Ray Charles · produced by Sid Feller · ABC-Paramount · twelve tracks, six to a side
Mode
Country and western songs set for jazz big band, or for strings and a mixed chorus, and sung as blues and gospel
Mythos
The one born to lose, the bound heart, the stranger who cannot speak his love; the stranger at the gate admitted, borne by the premise
Phase
Twelve tracks, six to a side; band and string settings alternating, each side moving from comic loss toward ache, the record opening and closing on swing
Presentation
Album; eleven songs from the country and western repertory of about 1939 to 1958 and one traditional blues ballad, no original song; issued by ABC-Paramount in 1962
Register
One voice from near speech to a cry, with blues piano behind it; brass and reeds in swing time, or strings and a studio chorus
Scale
The couple and its losses; behind them the South, the city and the colour line, carried by who sings what
Governing Proposition
In 1962 the leading Black singer of the day gives a whole album to the songs of white Southern country music, sets them for jazz big band and for Hollywood strings, changes none of their words and all of their phrasing, and shows by sound alone that the line between country and rhythm and blues was drawn by the market and the colour line, not by the songs.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens on a song of being left, and it swings. Bye Bye Love is a country song, brisk and comic in its misery, and here it is set for a jazz big band, brass and reeds pushing behind a voice that treats the loss as a joke it has heard before. Nothing in the words is changed. In two minutes the method is stated whole: take a song from one side of American music, keep its words and its stance, and move it into a room where it was never meant to be played, with a singer from the other side.
The singer is Ray Charles, and in 1962 he was at the height of his crossover success, with Georgia on My Mind and Hit the Road Jack behind him and a joining of gospel and rhythm and blues that had already been carried into pop with strings on The Genius of Ray Charles (1959). ABC-Paramount issued this record that year, produced by Sid Feller: twelve tracks, six to a side, eleven of them songs from the country and western repertory of roughly 1939 to 1958, and one traditional blues ballad. There is no original song on it.
The record has two manners. About half the tracks are set for big band, in swing or shuffle time; the others for strings and a mixed studio chorus behind voice and piano. Through each side they alternate. Both ends of the record are band tracks, the swing of Bye Bye Love at the start and of Hey, Good Lookin’ at the close, and between them the strings carry the record’s heaviest songs. The plan is plain and the frame is placed with intent, but it is a plan of contrast more than a form: many of the songs could change places, or stand alone, and the record would know the same thing.
Movement II
The second track is the record’s summit. You Don’t Know Me is the song of a man who cannot speak his love, and Charles sings it from near speech to a cry, the voice rising on the turn of the melody while the strings open beneath it. The arrangement holds back. Nothing is added to the song that it does not need, and the height arrives because the voice has been kept low until it is earned. It is the clearest case on the record of a country song made into a standard without the loss of anything it had.
The voice carries the record, and on every track. Charles places each word against the beat, bends a syllable into a cry and falls back into speech, and his piano fills behind the band with blues figures. Born to Lose, which closes side one, rises by weariness rather than force: a voice that sounds as if it had already lost, singing a title that is its whole argument. Over five or so of the twelve tracks the record reaches this kind of height, always warm, never grand. The band tracks swing more than they rise; they have drive and wit, and they are not where the record lifts.
The making is load-bearing at its centre and faulted at its edges. The band charts are tight and well voiced, and the brass swings without crowding the singer. The string tracks are balanced and, at their best, restrained. But the mixed chorus is generic and heavy, and some of the string writing is the stock sweetening of the pop record of its year, settling into lushness where it might lift. Two or three of the band tracks are routine. The faults fall on a real share of the record, and in each case it is the voice that cuts through them.
Movement III
You Win Again is a Hank Williams song, a gambler’s surrender in love, and on this record it becomes a gospel-inflected blues without one word altered. That is the record’s finding in a single track. The resignation that sounds like plain country sorrow in its first form sounds like confession here, and the change is made entirely by phrasing: where the voice leans, where it waits, where it lets a syllable break. If the song can become this without being rewritten, then it was already this, and the difference lay elsewhere.
The record places Careless Love among the country songs: a traditional blues ballad set beside the songs of the Opry and the jukebox, and it does not sound out of place. There is no seam where it stands. It is the hinge of the record, the one song that is already blues, and its quiet presence makes the argument the whole sequence makes: that the white Southern song of loss and the Black song of loss are one music, and that the line between country and rhythm and blues was drawn by the market and the colour line, not by the songs.
In 1962, with the South still segregated, that was a social fact made audible. The record states it without a word of statement, by the act of who sings what, and the act is its strength and its limit. Inside the songs, what is disclosed is the familiar condition of heartbreak, rendered with great force and rarely articulated further. The larger finding is made once, by the premise, and demonstrated on every track; nothing on the record develops it beyond the demonstration, and no song takes it as its subject.
Movement IV
I Can’t Stop Loving You stands fifth on side two, where the record’s ache is gathered. The chorus states the title, smooth and polished, and Charles answers above it, half preaching and half pleading, so that the song becomes a dialogue between a studio sound and a voice from the church. The chorus is the record’s fault and its frame at once. It is heavy, and the voice must cut through it; but the cutting is the drama, and without the polish the answer would have less to answer.
The song was issued as a single, backed with Born to Lose, and reached number one on the pop chart; You Don’t Know Me followed it as a single. The album held the top of the album chart for many weeks, and a second volume, made to the same plan, was issued later in the same year. The stake behind this success was real. A Black singer at the height of his crossover career gave a whole record to a repertory identified with white Southern audiences, and risked both his rhythm and blues public and the country one.
The turn was in the joining more than in any new musical language. Charles had cut a country song, I’m Movin’ On, at Atlantic in 1959; strings had been his habit since the same year; and the big band and the Hollywood string section were the most established idioms of the day. What the record moved was the line between markets, crossed at their centres by the leading Black singer of his time. After it, country songs became the repertory of soul and pop singers, and later records walked the same path from both sides.
Movement V
The record ends as it began, on a joke. Hey, Good Lookin’, the second Hank Williams song on side two, is a swinging big-band flirtation, and after the long ache of I Can’t Stop Loving You it returns the record to the brisk wit of its opening. The frame is complete. Between the two swings, each side runs from comic loss toward grief, side one ending on Born to Lose and side two gathering toward its fifth track, and the band and the strings alternate through both. One voice brings the same grain and the same blues inflection to the flirtation and to the lament, and that is the law that holds the record together.
The law holds at the level of the voice and the premise, not of the arrangement. The two manners stand side by side and are not fused, and the seam between them shows. What the record holds is narrow: heartbreak, regret and resignation, the couple in every song, fate in Born to Lose and You Win Again. Beyond the songs it carries a social order, race and region and the market, the South and the city, by the fact of who sings what. The voice integrates that order, but no song takes it up. Labour, the family beyond the couple, the state and the natural world are absent, and the sacred enters only in the gospel bend of a syllable.
The record has lasted whole. It has stayed in print, its two best-known songs remain in broadcast in Charles’s versions more than in their first ones, and it is named whenever the history of country music and race is told. The album heard from first track to last has a narrower public than those songs, and the studio chorus and string writing now sound of their year, though the voice and the band do not. Its strongest claims are its history and its reach; its weakest are its form as a collection of songs. It stands on the floor of the canonical, held there by what it is, a book of other people’s songs, and lifted there by what it did with them.
Act III · The Twelve
Twelve songs, six to a side, and the subtractive test bites harder here than on most albums of its standing. The frame is compelled. Bye Bye Love must open: a brisk song of being left, set to big-band swing, states the method in two minutes. Born to Lose must close side one, and I Can’t Stop Loving You must stand near the end of side two, where the record’s ache is gathered. Careless Love is required as the one song that is already blues, the hinge where the two repertories touch. Elsewhere the songs are interchangeable: Half as Much, Just a Little Lovin’ and It Makes No Difference Now could change places with songs on Volume Two, made the same year to the same plan. A collection compelled in its idea, permitted in most of its parts.
Score: 7.5 / 10
The disclosure can be stated, and it holds: the white Southern song of loss and the Black song of loss are one music, and the line between country and rhythm and blues was drawn by the market and the colour line, not by the songs. The record says it in sound. Charles changes neither the words nor the stance; he changes the phrasing, and the phrasing is the proof. You Win Again, a Hank Williams surrender, becomes a gospel-inflected blues without one word altered, and Careless Love sits among the country songs with no seam. In 1962 that was a social fact made audible. Held below the gate: the finding is made by the act of the record more than within any song, and inside the songs what is disclosed is heartbreak, rendered more than articulated.
Score: 8.1 / 10
Height is real, of one warm kind, and it comes on perhaps five of twelve tracks. You Don’t Know Me is the summit: the voice moves from near speech to a cry on the turn of the melody, and the strings open beneath it. Born to Lose rises by weariness, a voice that sounds as if it had already lost. In I Can’t Stop Loving You the chorus states the title and Charles answers above it, half preaching and half pleading. You Win Again reaches the dreadful kind, resignation that sounds like confession. The band tracks swing more than they rise: Bye Bye Love, Half as Much and Hey, Good Lookin’ have drive and wit, not elevation. The chorus sometimes flattens the height it frames, and some string tracks settle into lushness rather than lift.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Within the songs, myth is evoked and not built. The loser fated from birth in Born to Lose, the lover who cannot stop, the stranger who cannot speak his love in You Don’t Know Me, the gambler’s surrender in You Win Again: these are old figures of fate and the bound heart, and the voice gives each a real moment’s weight. The particular is thin, since these songs name few places and the record adds none. The larger pattern lies in the act: a voice from one side of a divided country enters the other side’s songs and is heard there as its own, the stranger at the gate admitted. That figure is borne by the premise and the history, not built by the sequence; nothing on the record stages it, and that holds the axis well below the gate.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The inheritance is twofold: the country and western song of the Opry and the jukebox, and Charles’s own joining of gospel and rhythm and blues, already carried into pop with strings on The Genius of Ray Charles (1959). The turn is real. A Black singer at the height of his crossover success, with Georgia on My Mind and Hit the Road Jack behind him, gives a whole album to a repertory identified with white Southern audiences, in 1962, and sets it in the two most urban settings to hand. The stake was both his publics. Held below the gate: he had cut I’m Movin’ On at Atlantic in 1959, the arrangements are established idioms of the day, and the swerve lies in the joining, not in a new musical language.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Would changing the form change what the record knows? In its central point, yes. The knowledge that these songs belong to the singer, and to everyone, exists only as performance in a foreign setting. Sung over steel guitar and fiddle they would be country records by a Black singer, a curiosity; set for big band and strings they become standards, and the record shows that a setting can translate a repertory without changing its words. The sequence is counted here, once: band and strings alternate, side one runs from comic loss to Born to Lose, side two from Worried Mind to the long ache of I Can’t Stop Loving You, and the record closes on a joke as it began. Held: the alternation is a programme of contrast more than a form, and most songs could stand in another order, or alone.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Sixty-four years supply evidence of two kinds. The record has been returned to as a document, in the history of country music and race, in accounts of Charles’s career and in arguments over genre and the colour line, where it is the standard case and keeps the question open rather than settling it. Singers return to its readings: You Don’t Know Me and I Can’t Stop Loving You are sung in Charles’s versions more than in the originals, and his phrasing is studied. The formal yield is narrower. The arrangements give little more once heard; the chorus and the string charts are of their year and do not reorganise on return; the band tracks are well made rather than deep. The depth is in the voice and the premise, not across the record.
Score: 7.9 / 10
The field is American popular music of the early 1960s, country and rhythm and blues together. The intrinsic force is real and bounded: the record showed that the line between the two markets could be crossed at their centres, by the leading Black singer of the day, and that a country song could become an urban standard without losing its stance. Its musical means were not new, and that holds the force short; the string sound of Nashville, which belongs to others, is not credited here. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: a best-selling album, number one on the album chart for many weeks; I Can’t Stop Loving You a number one single; a sequel the same year; and country songs made the repertory of soul and pop singers, on a path later records walked from both sides.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Survival is weighed over sixty-four years, on form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the twelve-track record survives as issued and has stayed in print, reissued many times, sometimes with Volume Two. Presence is continuous and wide for its songs: I Can’t Stop Loving You and You Don’t Know Me remain in broadcast and in common knowledge, and the record is named whenever the history of country music and race is told. The album heard whole has a narrower public than its two best-known songs, and that is charged. So is the fabric: the studio chorus and the string writing are sounds of 1962, heard by some now as dated sweetening, though the voice and the band have not dated. It stands below the widest presence among albums, Kind of Blue at 9.0.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with invention weighed elsewhere. The voice is load-bearing throughout: Charles places each word against the beat, bends a syllable into a cry, drops to speech and rises out of it, and his piano fills behind the band with blues figures. The band charts are tight and well voiced, and the brass swings under Bye Bye Love and Hey, Good Lookin’ without crowding the singer. The string tracks are properly balanced, and You Don’t Know Me is arranged with restraint. The costs fall on a real share of the record: the mixed chorus is generic and heavy, singing the title of I Can’t Stop Loving You with a polish the voice must cut through; some string writing is stock pop sweetening; and two or three band tracks are routine.
Score: 8.5 / 10
One law governs the record: the country song carried by one voice into the city, with loss sung as blues. Take the two most distant elements, Hey, Good Lookin’, a swinging big-band flirtation, and Born to Lose, a slow lament over strings and chorus. They obey the same law at the level of the voice, which brings the same grain and the same blues inflection to both, and at the level of the premise, since both are country songs moved into urban settings. At the level of the arrangement they belong to two manners, held side by side rather than under one physics, and the record alternates them rather than fusing them. The range of mood runs from comic to grieving; the range of form is narrow. No break; the seam between the manners shows.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. Consciousness is held, as heartbreak, regret and resignation, in the string tracks above all. The couple is held in every song. Fate is held, in Born to Lose and You Win Again. Beyond the songs the record holds a social order in its premise: race, region and the market, the South and the city, carried by the fact of who sings what. The voice integrates that order, but no song takes it as subject. Labour, the family beyond the couple, the state and the natural order are absent, and the sacred enters only as the gospel inflection of the voice. Three orders held and a fourth carried by the act: that is what holds the figure lowest on the record.
Score: 6.8 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.0 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.7, Pressure on Tradition at 8.6 and The Made at 8.5. A record whole and in print after sixty-four years, its two best-known songs still heard in its versions; a crossing of the line between country and rhythm and blues at the centre of both markets, which made country songs the repertory of soul and pop singers; and a voice load-bearing on every track, with tight band charts behind it.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.8: heartbreak, the couple and fate held in the songs, and a social order of race, region and the market carried by the premise and taken up by no song, with labour, the state and the natural order absent. Below the rest, The Inevitable at 7.5 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.6: a frame and four songs compelled and the rest interchangeable with a second volume made to the same plan; and old figures of fate evoked in the songs, while the crossing the record enacts is borne by its history and built by nothing in its sequence.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.5 against a threshold of 7.5, on the line and with no room. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.8, The Made at 8.5, The Inner Law at 7.9, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 8.7 clears the bar of 8.5, and Pressure on Tradition at 8.6 clears it by a tenth, but The Swerve at 8.4, The Unconcealment at 8.1 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.6 fall short. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 7.5, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.8. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 8.0, at the floor of Tier IV, short of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · the LP as issued by ABC-Paramount in 1962, twelve tracks in their original order, six to a side, produced by Sid Feller; mono and stereo issues are treated as one record, and nothing here turns on the difference. Judged from knowledge of the recording and its reception; no recording, score or lyric sheet was in hand. Reissues that add tracks, or pair the record with Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Volume Two, issued later in 1962, are evidence for survival, not the object. Songs are cited by title, and no lyric is quoted. Facts that could not be verified, among them the month of release, the catalogue numbers, the dates, places and number of the sessions, the arrangers and which tracks each set, the exact division of the tracks between band and strings, the songwriters of most of the songs, the running time and track lengths, the number of songs considered for the record, its weeks at the top of the album chart and the single’s at the top of the pop chart, and the later records said to descend from it, are not given.