Never-before-released tapes from the 70s featuring Ray Charles have been discovered in his LA studio.
The 'Ray Sings Basie Swings' tapes were recorded live by producer Norman Granz live in concert with the Count Basie Orchestra. It is thought to be the only recording of Charles with the orchestra.Concord Records A&R chief John Burk will release the recordings on Concord. "The quality of these reels wasn't great," Burk recalls. "They appeared to be recordings from the live soundboard with Ray's vocal way up front, and the band way in the background. At first, the tapes seemed unusable, but Ray sounded amazing." Further investigation found that Charles was in fact performing with his own band and that the Basie Orchestra played earlier in the set. "I was disappointed that Ray wasn't performing with the Basie band. But, then I thought that we could re-record the music with the current Basie Orchestra."
The album will make its way first into Starbucks, the company that first put out the Genius Loves Company album. That album sold around 6 million copies, one quarter of which were sold at Starbucks.
