Ray Charles was R&B’s first superstar. He had hit albums in soul, jazz, R&B, pop and country, and his voice and singular approach on songs became iconic and had enormous global appeal.
While nearly all of his albums have been in print for decades, quite a few of his singles that weren’t released on LPs were largely forgotten. Now, Tangerine Records, the label Charles founded in 1962, has released four new LPs of singles, many of which are on vinyl for the first time since the original 45s.
Today, Tangerine is run by record producer John Burk, who is also a partner in the investment group Exceleration Music, which partnered with the estate of Ray Charles in 2021 to release new music from Charles’s catalog.
Born in Albany, Ga., in 1930, the singer-pianist-arranger attended the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine from 1937 to 1945, where he learned to play the piano, alto saxophone, clarinet, trumpet and organ. He was most comfortable at the keyboard.
After his mother’s death in 1945, when he was 14, Charles left school and moved to Jacksonville, Fla., to live with his late mother’s friend. He also began playing piano in territory bands. In 1949, Charles and his band released Confession Blues, which reached No. 2 on Billboard’s R&B chart.
In 1950, Charles moved to Los Angeles and toured with blues artist Lowell Fulson. Two more hits followed—Baby, Let Me Hold Your Hand (1951) and Kissa Me Baby (1952)—bringing him to the attention of Atlantic Records’ co-founder Ahmet Ertegun, who signed him in 1952. A string of major hits followed, and Charles was on his way.
Back in the 1950s, ‘60s and into the ‘70s, the pop record industry was a singles business. The goal was to land a hit on AM radio, where repeated airplay would drive sales. But not all singles by an artist charted well or made it onto subsequent LP releases.
Three of the new Tangerine covers—No One Does It Like Ray Charles; Ray Charles: Love, Country Style; and Ray Charles: Ingredient in a Recipe for Soul—look remarkably like albums from the early 1960s. But they’re not. They’re all new releases. The fourth, Ray Charles: Come Live With Me, was first released in 1974 and was re-issued in the spring.
What you realize listening to these LPs is that there are no bad Ray Charles songs. In some ways, Charles was to R&B what Count Basie was to swing. Their sounds were home grown, unmistakable and overwhelmingly appealing without selling out.
All of the issued and re-issued material on these albums has been remastered and restored. The four releases can be found on LP (orange vinyl), CD, digital and streaming. To buy, go here, here, here and here. Or here. Or go here.
Here’s side 1 of Come Live With Me…
Here’s A Stranger in Town from Ray Charles: Ingredients in a Recipe for Soul…
Here’s Don’t Change on Me from Ray Charles: Love, Country Style…
And here’s No One that appears on No One Does It Like Ray Charles!