[Dixielandjazz] Musical Necrophilia?????

[Steve Barbone]

What's Next? Bill Haesler playing washboard with Buddy Bolden? Or perhaps
with Louis and the Hot 5/7?

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


A Union Made in Musical Heaven: Two Legends, Neither Living

NY TIMES - By NATE CHINEN - October 3, 2006

Ray Charles and Count Basie never recorded together, to the best of anyone¹s
recollection. But that hasn¹t stopped the realization of an album called
³Ray Sings, Basie Swings,² which Concord Records and Starbucks Hear Music
are jointly releasing today. In fact, that lack of precedent has been one
selling point in a carefully plotted promotional campaign for the album, a
byproduct of artistry and technology that illustrates the commodification of
classic pop in our time.

The seeds for ³Ray Sings, Basie Swings² were sown late last year when John
Burk, a Concord executive, trawled the label¹s vaults and came across a box
with the promising label of ³Ray/Basie.² As it turned out, the tapes inside
offered no evidence of collaboration: they were soundboard recordings from a
European tour in the 1970¹s, with each artist leading his own band. The
sound quality of the Ray Charles tapes was uneven, with his lead vocal
coming through clearly but the music sounding distant and muddy.

Mr. Burk, who was the chief producer on ³Genius Loves Company² ‹ Charles¹s
last studio effort, issued in 2004, after his death but before the release
of ³Ray,² the biopic starring Jamie Foxx ‹ refused to let history have the
final word. He thought it seemed feasible to graft Charles¹s vocal tracks
digitally onto fresh backgrounds recorded by the present-day Basie
Orchestra, sans Basie, who died in 1984.

So Mr. Burk brought in Gregg Field, a producer and engineer who also happens
to be a former drummer in bands led by Basie and Charles. And through a
painstaking process that Mr. Field has often compared to ³painting the
Sistine Chapel with a Q-tip,² the producers managed to create a nearly
seamless studio accompaniment for croons and cries last heard onstage some
30 years ago. 

We¹ve seen this sort of beyond-the-grave work before. In 1991 the Top 40
charts made room for ³Unforgettable,² Natalie Cole¹s séance of a duet with
her father, Nat King Cole, who died in 1965. Five years later, the Coles
exchanged verses once again, less successfully, on ³Stardust.² And in 1999
there was ³What a Wonderful World,² a one-sided alliance between the
long-departed Louis Armstrong and the still-breathing Kenny G.

³Ray Sings, Basie Swings² feels more impressive because of a brilliant
sustained performance by Charles, in his 40¹s and at the height of his
powers. But for the record, Basie himself is nowhere to be found, and
there¹s something slick and airless about Shelly Berg¹s arrangements. The
new Raelettes, led by Patti Austin, sound duly sassy but a shade too
contemporary, as if airbrushed. On the other hand, they¹d go nicely with a
latte.

Starbucks and Concord, which together sold six million copies of ³Genius
Loves Company,² have packaged the new album with some purposeful allusions.
³Ray Sings, Basie Swings² is a variation on ³Count Basie Swings, Joe
Williams Sings,² a hit album in 1955, and ³Basie Swings, Bennett Sings,²
Tony Bennett¹s debut with the band a few years later. More flagrantly, the
album¹s secondary title, ³Ray Charles + Count Basie Orchestra = Genius2,²
echoes the formulation on one of the most striking titles in the Ray Charles
catalog, ³Genius + Soul = Jazz.²

That 1961 Impulse! album paired Charles with the Count Basie Orchestra,
minus, Basie and featured arrangements by Quincy Jones, who received
secondary billing on the cover. Ray Charles didn¹t do much singing on the
album; he played a Hammond B-3 organ, not his usual instrument. Concord
acknowledges this history in one sense ‹ Joey DeFrancesco, as a proxy for
Charles, plays B-3 ‹ but also seems intent on obscuring it. Press releases
distributed this summer asserted that ³ ŒRay Sings, Basie Swings¹ marks the
first and only recordings in which the ŒGenius¹ is backed by the legendary
bandleader¹s orchestra,² meaning Basie. Mr. Jones, who praises the album as
an ³amazing collaboration² in a blurb on the inside cover, obviously didn¹t
vet that claim.

Mr. Jones was also the bridge between Basie and Frank Sinatra, who
established a durable template for marketers of American song. ³Sinatra at
the Sands² is probably the best-known album to feature the Count Basie
Orchestra behind a popular singer, and so it hardly seems coincidental that
the cover illustration of ³Ray Sings, Basie Swings² features a similar
graphic design: a horizontal row of asterisks with a rectangular block of
text. 

Mr. Field, the producer of ³Ray Sings, Basie Swings,² has a pertinent tie to
Sinatra too: he played on the 1993 album ³Duets² and its sequel, ³Duets II.²
Those releases, produced by Phil Ramone, paired Sinatra with singers ranging
from Barbra Streisand to Bono, and technology played a big part in bringing
them together. Of course, that technology ‹ fiber-optic connections that
allowed Sinatra¹s duet partners literally to phone their parts in ‹ now
seems downright quaint. At the time, it sparked impassioned debate about
what constitutes a performance: in The New York Times, Stephen Holden hailed
³Duets² as ³a stunning intergenerational collaboration² while William Safire
called it ³a series of artistic frauds.²

The public was far less conflicted. ³Duets² became the first multiplatinum
album of Sinatra¹s career, with more than three million copies sold. For
adult-contemporary artists, the duets concept almost became a license for
printing money; Ms. Streisand and Elton John are among the artists to cash
in. A more recent example, Notorious B.I.G.¹s ³Duets: The Final Chapter,²
could be offered as proof that duets albums aren¹t just for your parents
anymore. It also demonstrates how little difference it makes, commercially
speaking, whether the artist at the center of the action is actually alive.
(The album was certified platinum within two months of release.)

³Genius Loves Company,² which featured some production by Phil Ramone, was
promoted as an answer to ³Duets,² and it sold appropriately: it¹s the only
multiplatinum album in the Ray Charles catalog. It also won eight Grammy
Awards, including album of the year. That¹s a tough benchmark for the new
album, even though it captures Charles in much better form.

After all, it will be up against the first true duets effort from Mr.
Bennett, released by RPM/Columbia Records last week in honor of his 80th
birthday. His ³Duets: An American Classic,² produced by Mr. Ramone, features
Bono and Ms. Streisand but no fiber optics, so to speak. When Mr. Bennett
performed last Tuesday at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, he welcomed
the singers Natalie Cole, Elvis Costello and Michael Bublé onstage, in the
flesh. 

Nothing beats that sort of interaction, but sometimes you¹ve got to do the
best you can with what you have. A few years ago the Sinatra estate
authorized a concert production that featured, among other things, some of
Sinatra¹s televised performances synched to a live 40-piece orchestra; in
New York it played at Radio City Music Hall.

Surely the team behind ³Ray Sings, Basie Swings² has entertained the thought
of presenting Ray Charles in similar fashion, using archival film. Failing
that, there¹s always Plan B. The Basie Orchestra is available; has anybody
heard from Jamie Foxx?