Consumer Guide Album

Ray Charles: What'd I Say [Atlantic, 1959]
Having pulled out this 1959 album for Carola's delectation in March and then found myself singing along on track after track, I checked and found I'd never written about it, not once—shabby treatment for the second rock and roll album I'd ever bought, right out of college with some Miles and such in 1962, five years before I became Esquire's short-lived "secular music" columnist. (For the record, 1956's The Platters was the first.) That is a major lacuna, because this is a bona fide classic—an album I soon learned Carola had heard so often in college that she didn't need my introduction. The seven-minute title track, which I guarantee you'll never tire of, is only the lead. You too will find yourself joining in on the Raelettes' "Tell Me How Do You Feel" "I want to know"s followed by their title-establishing "What Kind of Man Are You"s followed by the piano-dominated "Rockhouse" and the lightly crooned "Roll With My Baby" and then three more stone winners including the Genius's near-conversational interpretation of "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean." A must-own, nothing less. A+