Jazz: The Best Of Ray Charles

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31097, 28 June 1966, Page 12

Jazz: The Best Of Ray Charles

The evolution of Ray Charles has been one of the most fascinating processes in jazz in the last decade. An unpolished and undisciplined young rhythm-and-blues singer when he first recorded in the early 19505, he has been through—and survived—commercial exploitation to become a passionate but nearly flawless jazz singer. On the way he has maintained, in a period when other groups have been retrenching because of economic difficulties, a full-size 16-piece band which has included at one time or another many of the top names in jazz.

One of these is David “Fathead” Newman, a tenor saxophonist who is very much to the fore in Charles’s latest L.P., Ray Charles Live In Concert (Ampar mono ML-31,609, 12in 39s 6d). The redundancy in the title aside (no even Ampar could record an artist dead in concert) this is a very lively set. with Newman’s saxophone kicking along the band and Charles singing with a kind of refined fire. The LP was recorded at a

concert in the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles and the numbers are drawn from Charles’s standard concert repertoire. Most of them have been recorded by him many times. But they have never sounded better.

NO NONSENSE Kenny Burrell is another jazzman who has been workiing his way to the top in I his profession with a minimum of fuss. His latest L.P. Guitar Forms (Verve mono V-8612, 12 in. 39s 6d) teams his guitar with a large band led by Gil Evans and a quartet including the brilliant young pianist Roger Kel-

laway, Joe Benjamin (bass) and Grady Tate (drums). Evans has collaborated previously on records with such star soloists as Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley; but here he is content to remain a junior partner, sketching quiet backgrounds for Burrell’s jewel-like improvisations. The atmosphere lifts for the ttyree quartet tracks. “Downstairs” is a groovy blues, “Terrace Theme” another blues with a midnight quality; and on both Burrell relaxes and swings powerfully. “Breadwinner,” taken up-tempo, is brief but crisp; indeed, there is an air of no-nonsense authority about the whole proceedings. SOULFUL

Experience and maturity, with a dash of panache, are the chief characteristics of a superb L.P. featuring the jazz veterans Johnny Hodges and Wild BUI Davis. The title is Con-Soul and Sax (R.C.A. Mono L.P.M. 3393, 12in, 39s 6d) and the contents are relaxed unpretentious and thoroughly rewarding. Hodges, who just may be the finest alto saxophonist in jazz today, has been a star of the Duke Ellington orchestra almost without interruption since the 19205. Most of the tracks here are standard items from his repertoire, but he plays them as if encountering them for the first time. SMOTHERED His smooth, creamy sound and flowing rhythms may not please the avant-garde; but to anyone else with ears to hear this superb and soulful set must come as one of the records of the year. Astrud Gilberto, the “Girl from Ipanema” whose small,

sweet voice and monotone delivery were just right in the bossa nova setting of the LP she made with Stan Getz last year, does not get much of a chance in The Astrud Gilberto Album (Verve mono V-8608, 12in, 39s 6d). In the right setting she carries with her the essence of a quiet night; here the accompaniment—a large orchestra, including a string section, led by Marty Paich—smothers her.