Ray Charles - Ray Charles (1979 Japanese Atlantic Mono Vinyl LP)

Ray Charles - Ray Charles | Vinyl LP - 1979 Atlantic Japanese Pressing (P-4580A, mono, Warner-Pioneer Corporation)

• "I Got a Woman," "Hallelujah I Love Her So," "Mess Around" and "Drown in My Own Tears", the Atlantic singles from 1953 to 1957 that fused gospel and R&B into soul music, collected on Charles's debut album with David "Fathead" Newman and a rotating band of jazz-trained horn players behind him.
• Produced by Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler, with "Mess Around" written by Ertegun himself, on the label that simultaneously released John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus and the Modern Jazz Quartet.
• 1979 Japanese mono pressing made by Warner-Pioneer Corporation, with Japanese liner notes by Toyo Nakamura, founder of Music Magazine, and a four-page foldout insert with lyrics.

Ray Charles was a pianist and alto saxophonist who could play jazz as well as anyone on Atlantic's roster, and he proved it on The Great Ray Charles (1957), Genius + Soul = Jazz (1961) and a string of sessions with Milt Jackson. But the fourteen tracks on this debut album are pure rhythm and blues, and their significance doesn't need a jazz frame to be understood. "I Got a Woman," recorded in Atlanta in November 1954 at a radio station studio with Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun supervising, took a gospel melody and put secular lyrics to it, and the combination changed popular music. "Mess Around," Ertegun's own composition, arrived a year earlier. "Drown In My Own Tears," "A Fool For You" and "Hallelujah I Love Her So" followed, each one building on the same fusion of sacred intensity and worldly desire. David Newman, who later recorded as a jazz leader for Atlantic, Prestige and Riverside, played saxophone in Charles's band from 1954 onward, and his solos run through these tracks with a tone that sits between the R&B and jazz worlds without choosing one.

These are singles collected rather than album sessions. The recordings span 1953 to early 1957, produced by Ertegun and Wexler at studios in New York, Atlanta, New Orleans and Miami, and the album was assembled from them for release in 1957 on Atlantic 8006. Guy Remark wrote the original sleeve notes and Marvin Israel designed the cover. This is the 1979 Japanese pressing (P-4580A), made by Warner-Pioneer Corporation as part of the R&B Forever 1500 series, with Japanese liner notes by Toyo Nakamura, who founded Music Magazine and was one of Japan's most important popular music critics. A four-page foldout insert includes Nakamura's notes and lyrics transcribed by Linda Hennrick.