Ray Sings Basie Swings
The pairing of Ray Charles and Count Basie never actually happened… At least, not physically. It is a dream realized. A mash-up made in heaven.In 2005, than Concord Records head John Burk (producer of Charles’ 2004 Grammy-winning Genius Loves Company) found a reel of tape simply labeled “Ray/Basie.” What Burk heard, though, wasn’t Basie and Ray playing together, but rather separate sets during concerts performed in Germany and England.It was thought that this potentially momentous discovery would be unusable. Until Burk had the brilliant idea to bring the contemporary Count Basie Orchestra (whose leader died in 1984) into the studio to lay newly recorded instrumental tracks behind Charles vocals. Burk and his co-producers decided on a single goal: to make the date sound like a genuine heart-to-heart collaboration. To create the impression that it was actually performed together, the editing process took four months. The end result is a compelling and real collaboration, even if it didn