Album of the Week: 'The Genius of Ray Charles'

Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books and now writer/director of award-winning films. He was also a longtime editor of the legendary Crawdaddy.

One of the all-time greats in any genre, from Brother Ray, here’s his big band/string orchestra breakthrough from 1959. By turns hot, cool, jazzy, soulful, swinging. The album title had it right. Also earned Ray a Grammy for male vocal performance. Get it any way you can (I have it from decades ago on vinyl and still sounds great). A few tracks below, plus the usual cartoon. Enjoy, then subscribe, it’s still free.

“Let the Good Times Roll”

“It Had to Be You”

“Just for a Thrill”

“Two Years of Torture”

The classic “Come Rain or Come Shine,” straight from my wedding tape, February 1983.

and live, good times still rolling…

Cartoon

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“Always worth reading.” — Frank Rich, New York magazine, producer of Veep and Succession

Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s atomic bomb movie twisted by the White House and Pentagon), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. His 2021 film, Atomic Cover-up, won four awards, and his current one, The First Attack Ads, aired over hundreds of PBS stations this past fall. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher. He recently co-produced a film about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.