Love Country Style (2025 Remaster) Ray Charles

• 1 If You Were Mine (2025 Remaster) 03:51
• 2 Ring Of Fire (2025 Remaster) 03:07
• 3 Your Love Is So Doggone Good (2025 Remaster) 03:03
• 4 Don't Change On Me (2025 Remaster) 03:26
• 5 Till I Can't Take It Anymore (2025 Remaster) 03:33
• 6 You've Still Got A Place In My Heart (2025 Remaster) 03:50
• 7 I Keep It Hid (2025 Remaster) 04:11
• 8 Sweet Memories (2025 Remaster) 03:34
• 9 Good Morning Dear (2025 Remaster) 03:15
• 10 Show Me The Sunshine (2025 Remaster) 03:27
• Total Runtime 35:17

Info zu Love Country Style (2025 Remaster)

Ray Charles’ long-lost 1970 classic Love Country Style returns, newly restored and remastered, spotlighting his soul-soaked take on country standards with the timeless power only he could bring.

Ray Charles never treated country music as a novelty. He sang it because he loved it, and few records capture that passion better than Love Country Style. Originally released in June 1970 on his Tangerine Records label, the album has been long out of print and hard to find.

The album found Charles embracing songs by Mickey Newbury, Jimmy Webb, and Johnny Cash with the same conviction he once brought to the Great American Songbook. His version of “Don’t Change On Me” became a Top 40 hit, proof that even when he dipped his toe into Nashville, he brought audiences along with him. “Ring Of Fire” is reborn as a brassy soul workout, while “Sweet Memories” and “Good Morning Dear” showcase the quiet intensity he could summon in a ballad.

Behind him was a first-rate team. Sid Feller, his longtime arranger, shaped the lush gospel-tinged backdrops. The sessions featured guitar work from David T. Walker and Steve Guillory, electric bass by Carol Kaye, and engineering by David Braithwaite. Together, they built a sound that blurred genre lines without erasing their origins.

Love Country Style may not have carried the cultural weight of Modern Sounds In Country and Western Music, but it has endured as a fan favorite, a record that underscores Charles’ unmatched gift for transforming material into something unmistakably his own. Its re-release offers the chance to hear one of his most heartfelt projects in its best light, reminding us once again that Ray Charles never just interpreted a song, he inhabited it.

Ray Charles, keyboards, vocals
Sid Feller, arrangements, conductor
David T. Walker, guitar
Steve Guillory, guitar
Carol Kaye, electric bass

Digitally remastered

Ray Charles
The name Ray Charles is on a Star on Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame. The name Ray Charles designates a superstar worldwide. His bronze bust is enshrined in the Playboy Jazz Hall of Fame. There is the bronze medallion that was cast and presented to him by the French Republic on behalf of the French people. In just about every Hall of Fame that has anything to do with music, be it Rhythm & Blues, Jazz, Rock & Roll, Gospel or Country & Western, Ray’s name is very prominently displayed. There are many awards given to him in the foregoing categories as proof.

Probably the strongest element in Ray Charles’ life, and the most concentrated driving force, was music. Ray often said, “I was born with music inside me. That’s the only explanation I know.”

Ray Charles was not born blind. In fact, it took almost seven years for him to lose his sight in its entirety, which means he had seven years to see the joy and sadness of this big wonderful world – a world he would never see again. As a seven year old child, in searching for light, he stared at the sun continuously, thereby eliminating all chances of the modern-day miracle, cornea transplants – a surgery unheard of in 1937.

Perhaps the reason that Ray Charles made music his mistress and fell madly in love with the lady is that music was a natural to him. Ray sat at a piano and the music began; he opened his mouth and the lyrics began. He was in absolute control.

But the rest of his life was not quite so simple. Ray was born at the very beginning of the Great Depression – a depression that affected every civilized country in the world. Ray was born in 1930 in Albany, Georgia, the same year that another Georgia native by the name of Hoagy Carmichael, was already making his mark on the world. In 1930, the year of Ray’s birth, Hoagy recorded a song that became an all-time classic and remains so to this day; a song titled “Stardust.” It’s ironic that these two Georgia natives would someday cross paths again, as they did 30 years later when Ray Charles was asked by the State of Georgia to perform, in the Georgia Legislative Chambers, the song they had selected as their state song. That song was Ray’s version of “Georgia,” written by Hoagy Carmichael. Hoagy, who unfortunately was too ill to attend the event, was listening via telephone/satellite tie-up.

Ray’s mother and father, Aretha and Bailey, were “no-nonsense” parents. Even after Ray lost his sight, his mother continued to give him chores at home, in the rural area in which they lived, such as chopping wood for the wood burning stove in the kitchen in order for them to prepare their meals. Chores such as this often brought complaints from the neighbors, which were met with stern words from Mrs. Robinson. She told them her son was blind, not stupid, and he must continue to learn to do things, not only for himself, but for others as well. Unfortunately, Ray lost the guidance of his mother and the counseling of his father at a very young age. At 15 years old, Ray Charles was an orphan, but he still managed to make his way in this world under very trying conditions; living in the South and being of African-American heritage, plus being blind and an orphan.

Ray refused to roll over and play dead. Instead he continued his education in St. Augustine, at Florida’s State School for the Deaf and Blind. A few years later, Ray decided to move. His choice was Seattle, Washington. It was in Seattle that Ray recorded his first record. It was also in Seattle that the seed was planted for a lifelong friendship with Quincy Jones. More information please visit the Ray Charles homepage.

Dieses Album enthält kein Booklet