In 2003, viewers saw the emotion on Willie Nelson’s face as he performed with his friend Ray Charles for the last time.
In 2003, a number of great performers gathered for Willie Nelson’s 70th birthday concert. One unforgettable moment from that concert celebration occurred when Nelson took the stage to sing “A Song For You” with Leon Russell and Ray Charles.
The performance at New York’s Beacon Theatre, is memorable for a number of reasons. Of course, it is a great teaming of the three friends singing Russell’s classic song and they all do great. But it is the emotional impact of the performance that shines through the most, as you watch Willie Nelson’s face near tears for much of the song.
Nathaniel Rateliff, on the One By Willie podcast, recently reported that Willie’s sadness was because he knew Ray Charles was very ill. In fact, the performance would the be last with the two old friends. Willie was reportedly very close to Ray Charles, as well as to Leon Russell, so it is a touching performance among the three men.
I love you in a place Where there’s no space or time; I love you for my life, You’re a friend of mine; And when my life is over, Remember when we were together; We were alone, And I was singing this song to you.
After Russell and Nelson take turns at the beginning, they turn over the song to the great Ray Charles. Check it out, and have some tissues handy.
The performance, as well as other songs from the concert, appear on Nelson’s album, Live and Kickin‘.
In 1973, Barbra Streisand joined Ray Charles on the Buck Owens classic, “Crying Time.” Although many know that Charles had a hit with the song, not many know that Streisand also recorded her own version.
Buck Owens wrote “Crying Time” and originally released it as a B-side to “I’ve Got a Tiger By the Tail” in 1964. Although Owens’s version of “Crying Time” did not chart, Ray Charles decided to record the song. He released it as the title track for his album Crying Time in 1966.
The song features a typical country and western theme, with the singer focusing on a lost love. The singer’s lover, however, has not left yet. But the singer knows the lover is leaving by the look in her eyes and the way she holds the singer. One may wonder whether the singer’s senses are correct, but late in the song in a key verse, the singer notes, “Now you say you’ve found someone that you love better.” But then, in what may be the song’s most interesting line, the singer adds, “That’s the way it’s happened every time before.”
In other words, it appears that the lover has cheated on the singer more than once before. So, while it is a song about love lost and Charles’s voice captures the aching pain of such loss, the reality is probably that the singer is better off and should find a new lover anyway.
By the time he released “Crying Time,” Ray Charles had already established himself as a wonderful interpreter of country music, including with his 1962 albums Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music and Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Vol 2. Those albums also established his skill in selecting country songs, whether or not they were big hits originally.
Charles’s version of “Crying Time” went on to make the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart, the R&B chart, and the easy listening chart. The recording also earned two Grammy Awards.
Streisand subsequently released an album featuring much of the music from the special. The album, also called Barbra Streisand…And Other Musical Instruments (1973), however, did not include the “Crying Time” duet. Streisand did include the song (without Charles) on her later album Butterfly (1974).
To be honest, I prefer the individual versions, but hearing and seeing the two all-time musical greats together is pretty cool.
What do you think of the duet? Leave your two cents in the comments.
If you never got to see Ray Charles live, you may find some solace in watching this outstanding complete performance from 1981. Apparently, Charles gave this performance at Edmonton’s Jubilee Auditorium on January 27, 1981. The show features the Edmonton Symphony backing up Charles.
After the opening song, “Riding Thumb,” the setlist includes songs such as “Busted,” “Georgia On My Mind,” “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” and “What’d I Say” before closing with “America the Beautiful.” 2024 UPDATE: Unfortunately, the entire concert video is no longer online, but you can check out Charles performing “Take These Chains From My Heart” from the same concert.
On February 18, 1959, Ray Charles laid down the song “What’d I Say” at the Atlantic Records studio on New York City. Besides being a great song, it is also unique for the way the song went from creation to recording to becoming a major hit.
The Creation of “What’d I Say”
One night while touring, Ray Charles was trying to fill the four hours he was contracted to perform at a dance near Pittsburgh (reportedly in Brownsville, Pennsylvania). Charles began on his Wurlitzer electric piano, finding a riff. As the riff began to build, Charles began making up words on the spot in front of the live audience. And then he found himself asking his female backup singers to repeat after him.
As illustrated in the movie Ray (2004) with Jamie Foxx, below is the film version of the evening (note that this video has the talking dialogue in Spanish but the singing is in English).
The audience went wild. Charles continued playing the new song on the road, eventually calling Atlantic to say, “I’m playing a song out here on the road, and I don’t know what it is—it’s just a song I made up, but the people are just going wild every time we play it, and I think we ought to record it.”
Newport Jazz Festival
The following year, Charles performed “What’d I Say” at the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival in Newport, Rhode Island as his closing number. But it left the audience wanting more. He was called back on stage for an encore as his tenth song of the night, “I Believe to My Soul.”
During this performance at the Newport Jazz Festival, unknown to those on stage, outside the festival police were clashing with a crowd of up to 12,000 young people. The angry youths were upset they could not get into see the performances.
“What’d I Say” Becomes a Hit
After “What’d I Say” was recorded in the studio in two parts, Atlantic released it as a single in July 1959. Then, it became the lead-off two-part title track for the What’d I Say album released in October 1959.
Although some criticized the song for blending gospel with sounds of sexual bliss, the recording became Charles’s first big crossover hit. It climbed to number one on the R&B charts and to number six on the pop charts.
“What’d I Say” was Charles’s first gold record, and Charles continued to use it as his closing number, as he did in Newport, throughout his career. While he would have other big hits, it was this little impromptu number that helped launch his career into the stratosphere and give the country a little soul. What is your favorite Ray Charles song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
In 1984, Willie Nelson and Ray Charles released the duet, “Seven Spanish Angels,” a Western saga telling a tragic story of two lovers and the mysterious seven Spanish Angels.
Willie Nelson was born in Abbott, Texas on April 29, 1933. In 2012 a statute of Willie was unveiled in Austin, but instead of choosing his birthday, organizers chose the appropriate date of April 20 at 4:20 p.m. for the man who released an album that features a song with Snoop Dogg called, “Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die.” Today we consider another one of his great collaborations, this one with Ray Charles singing “Seven Spanish Angels.”
The songwriters wrote the song in a style reminiscent of Marty Robbins’s “El Paso.” But since Robbins had passed away, reportedly they turned to Willie Nelson. And, in at least one version of the story, after Nelson made a demo of “Seven Spanish Angels,” producer Billy Sherill suggested they also enlist Ray Charles in a duet. (But see video below for a slightly different version of events.)
The duet was released as a single in November 1984 and originally appeared on Nelson’s album, Half Nelson (1985) and on Charles’s album, Friendship (1984). Although Charles had several successful country recordings including his great album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, this song was his most successful single.
I was surprised to learn that this song was so successful for Charles, as it is not the first country recording I think of when I think of Charles. But it is an excellent one.
In the video below, contrary to the Wikipedia story that Nelson’s producer enlisted Ray Charles after Nelson already had made a recording of the song, Nelson says here that Charles brought the song to him. Nelson adds that “it is going to be a phonograph record pretty soon.”
The Song’s Story and Who Are the Seven Spanish Angels?
Like Willie Nelson’s great recording of Townes Van Zandt’s “Pancho & Lefty” with Merle Haggard, “Seven Spanish Angels,” written by Troy Seals and Eddie Setser, recounts the story of an outlaw in Mexico. Instead of being about two men, though “Seven Spanish Angels” tells the story of an outlaw and his girlfriend. But the song takes a more tragic turn than the death of the outlaw.
After the outlaw is killed in a gunfight with a posse, the woman exclaims, “Father, please forgive me; I can’t make it without my man.” Then she picked up his rifle, knowing it is empty, and points it at the men who then shoot and kill her. The Seven Spanish Angels in the song “pray for the lovers in the valley of the guns.” When the smoke cleared, “seven Spanish angels took another angel home.”
The line about “another angel” at the end always made me wonder, does that mean the Seven Spanish Angels left the woman’s boyfriend behind? But there is another way to read the chorus because it repeats throughout the song, including after the first verse.
He looked down into her brown eyes, And said “Say a prayer for me;” She threw her arms around him, Whispered “God will keep us free;” They could hear the riders comin’, He said “This is my last fight; If they take me back to Texas, They won’t take me back alive.”
The outlaw does not clearly die in the first verse but it is followed by the chorus, which includes the line “And seven Spanish Angels / Took another angel home.” So the chorus at that point tells us the outlaw died and the seven Spanish Angels took him “home.” Then, after the verse about the girlfriend dying, the chorus, which is repeated, is just referring to the angels taking her “home.”
Such a reading is also consistent with a verse written for the song that was omitted in the Nelson-Charles version: “Now the people in the valley swear/ That when the moon’s just right,/ They see the Texan and his woman/ Ride across the clouds at night.” That verse tells us the lovers are still together after death. But the producer of the recording, Billy Sherrill apparently opted to omit that verse as it made the song too long.
And so, due to time constraints, we did not get to see the lovers happy again. Although maybe it was enough to know they had gone off with the seven Spanish Angels.
But who are the seven Spanish Angels? Some have said they signify “not just celestial figures, but also a collective yearning for salvation and solace.” Others have focused on the number seven and used the Bible to conclude they are a “reference to the seven angels from the Book of Revelation, whom bear witness to the end times.” Still others have reasoned that since angels have no nationality, the “Spanish” in the description means the seven Spanish Angels is a “reference to the members of the posse sent in pursuit of the couple.”
But the ambiguity of the meaning of “Seven Spanish Angels” may be intentional and there is no one definitive meaning. Reportedly, songwriter Eddie Setser came up with the title before writing the song. Thus, it was maybe the sound of the mysterious title that first attracted them to creating the story. And there are other ambiguities in the song, as we are left wondering why the man was being pursued to be taken back to Texas. We assume he is an outlaw, but we do not even know that for sure.
The only certainty we end up with is that love is eternal. And that is not a bad message for a song. And that is the story behind the song. What do you think happened at the end of “Seven Spanish Angels”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
