| Release Date: | 012023 |
| Currently: | Out of stock... OR coming soon - see Release Date above (MM/DD/YY) |
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December 2. 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 John heard, though, wasn't Basie and Ray playing together, but rather separate sets during concerts performed in Germany and England. Still, an unknown live recording of Charles from the mid-1970s was cause for excitement. But with his band obscured by a bad mix, leaving only Charles' exceptional vocal performance audible, 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. o 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't happen in real time.
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