Ray Charles, Hard Times (No One Knows Better Than I). Blues Gold. Hip-O, 000571402, 2006.
Ray Charles is the consummate artist—in other words, he better than another takes his experience, thinks about and uses that experience, experiments with how best to express these thoughts, and looks for an appropriate medium (genre) and audience in which to offer what he has expressed. No art comes from any one of these things alone, and that is precisely the idea of this playlist, that authenticity in art comes from originality joined to meaning, no matter the public or monetary results (in fact, arguably, the result of success might contribute to authenticity). This song specifically is worth listening to, and is included in the playlist, because its sound changed the musical identity of the blues. While sticking to the format of the blues, Ray Charles here offers the new bluesiness of his own soul.
Etta James, I’d Rather Go Blind. Blues Gold. Hip-O, 000571402, 2006.
Etta James, At Last. At Last! Geffen, 001172902, 1960.
This is another experiment in the soul of blues: sexual and romantic thematic philosophies wed to what the new decade had to offer an old genre musically. Etta James was more than just an amazing vocalist; her music, and the singing she puts into her music, voice an entirely new sort of meaning for the blues—the blues of women left behind by bluesmen. For all the “sexual and romantic” longing of the blues, what is often ignored is the fact that the men who pursued and then sang about that longing left behind scores upon scores of women with bluesy longing of their own. Etta James, here, takes an original form and makes that form her own, plainly by the very fact of her gender. Beyond the stunning spirituality with which she sings (listening to these songs is more important than doing anything else on this site), there is here the creative, cultural change in blues from male individualism to female assertion.
