I picked up this album primarily due to its cover art — which suggests a Peter Max/Yellow Submarine sensibility that really captivated me as a kid — but also due to this project being associated with the legendary singer, songwriter, and musician who famously signed with Atlantic Records in the 1950s:
As it turns out, there’s another Ray Charles – one who primarily interprets and arranges other people’s material for the “easy listening” crowd, shall we say. But that would be doing a disservice to the quality of effort that went into the making of this 1969 album. On Slices of Life, The Ray Charles Singers attempt to imbue this collection of “the latest hits” (as the LP’s liner notes explain) with “the new social-awareness” that was all the rage in popular music at that time. Furthermore, “to interpret the intensely personal attitudes of these songs,” The Ray Charles Singers (usually configured in groups of sixteen to twenty-five) “showcase their new, ‘contemporary’ appearances here as an octet. Two octets, actually – one superimposed over the other. This smaller group can perform with more intimacy, more nuance, more personal involvement, and more in keeping with the new ‘young’ rhythm patterns of today’s song hits.”
The result, to my ears, is a definite notch above “elevator music” One obvious highlight is the group’s playful arrangement of album-opener, “The Straight Life” by Sonny Curtis (one of Buddy Holly’s original Crickets and the songwriter behind the theme to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, “Love Is All Around“). But the standout track for me is “1432 Franklin Pike Circle Hero” — declared to be the album’s “essence” and authored by “the renowned” Bobby Russell, famous for “Honey,” “Little Green Apples,” and “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,” among others. It’s a funny lyric about a superdad of sorts who would love nothing more than to decompress after a hard day’s work alone with his beloved “Baltimore Colts” but, inevitably and unfailingly, gives his all to the kids who live on his block:
[Pssst: Click on the triangle to play “1432 Franklin Pike Circle Hero” by The Ray Charles Singers]
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B O N U S * H I S T O R Y!
The Ray Charles Singers:
King Recording Artists & Session Musicians
Imagine my surprise to discover that this “other” Ray Charles is yet another “music name” whose early career included a stint at King Records. In September of 1951, during a period where King made an effort to expand into more mainstream pop, Federal Records released a Kay Armen 45 on which the Armenian-American vocalist is backed by The Ray Charles Singers on one of the tracks. 45Cat contributor, Myles Mendoza posted this comment about Federal #14002:
The A side of this single “Just In Case” is a potent romantic ballad about a broken romance. The American singer/actress Kay Armen delivers it with conviction, and she is joined on the track by the Ray Charles Singers, who are well to the fore.
If you poke around some more, you find a couple other King releases with Ray Charles in differently-named configurations, for example The Ray Charles Quintet, also from 1951, or The Ray Charles Choir on this 1952 release:
“Come On-A My House“
Kay Armen & The Ray Charles Singers
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Ray Charles’ magnum opus,
“The Nifty Fifty United States“
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LINK to Sunshine Pop
