Ray Charles-The Genius of Soul (1991)

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General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Main Menu Audio Discography Trailer-4
Rating
Year Of Production	1991
Running Time	55:57 (Case: 60)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Yvonne Smith
Studio Distributor	Umbrella Entertainment	Starring	Ray Charles
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$29.95	Music	Ray Charles

     This 1991 documentary compresses into a little under one hour some forty years of the history of soul and piano legend Ray Charles. Born Ray Charles Robinson on September 23, 1930 in Albany, Georgia USA into extreme poverty, he lost his sight at age seven from glaucoma and was soon sent some 100 miles away from home to a school for the deaf and blind children. His mother couldn't afford the train fare to visit him, even at Christmas time, so he was often alone. His love of music started to show through at school and from attending church where he would listen to the gospel choir. When he started out as a performer in small clubs, he was told he would stand a much better chance of being successful if he was to imitate well known singers of the day such as Nat 'King' Cole. He did this initially, but decided to slowly develop a style all of his own - a cross between gospel, blues, and jazz, all with a gravelly and incredibly distinctive voice.

    He began recording in 1949. His first big hit was I Got A Woman in 1954, followed up by This Little Girl Of Mine in 1955, Talkin' 'Bout You in 1957 and the evocative Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying in 1959. One of his best known and covered works was also released in 1959, in What'd I Say. As an artist he blended blues, soul, ,jazz, classical and gospel together into an art form that is uniquely his. He even re-recorded some country & western songs giving them his own influence and opening up that often mocked genre to a whole new audience. He has collaborated with many other acclaimed artists in the world, and some of them appear in this documentary. The thoughts of Billy Joel, Dr. John, Billy Preston, Hank Crawford, Ray Charles Jnr., some great gags from Willie Nelson, and stories from several of Charles' backing singers The Raelettes are featured. There's plenty of old footage from his earlier performance years in addition to some of the more recent (1980s recent anyway) vintage. Ray Charles has been awarded an amazing 15 Grammy awards while performing for more than fifty years, a legacy of an amazing career.

    Several things I didn't know about him are covered in this documentary, mostly of a personal nature - it is almost a warts and all look at him, and doesn't just focus on the good stuff. He has fathered some nine children, almost all from different women, his disability not hindering an obviously voracious appetite for the ladies. He also had a serious (and I mean really serious) drug problem in the 1960s with a heroin addiction nearly ending his career and his life. When he nearly killed himself he sent himself to rehab, got cleaned up, and hit the road again.

    This documentary doesn't offer much in the way of performance highlights - there's some, but no song is played in its entirety. The documentary is narrated throughout with the rest of the talking made up by a series of older interviews with Ray Charles and the other artists.

Video

    Presented in the full frame aspect ratio of 1.33:1, the transfer is not 16x9 enhanced.

    Filmed in 1991 and with much of the video made up from extremely old archival footage, there are numerous problems and artefacts galore. There are no issues with shadow detail in any of the darker scenes which is a positive, but grain is troublesome quite regularly. Low level noise is apparent in much of the black and white and poorly maintained material. Overall, this has the look of a dated 80s television show at best, and a muddy, grainy, and blurry 60s television show at worst.

    The colour palette on offer is fairly bland. Lots of black and white dominate, but even the colour material looks washed out and old. Little vibrancy is on show except for a couple of performances from the 70s or 80 when Ray Charles dons a bright (and I mean bright) red jacket.

    There are no MPEG artefacts present. The source material is responsible for most of the other artefacts, such as tape tracking noise.

    There are no subtitles on this disc.

    This is a single layered disc only, so there is no layer change to navigate.

Video Ratings Summary

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Audio

    There is only one audio track on this disc, being a Dolby Digital 2.0 track encoded at 224 Kb/s. With this programme being essentially a documentary, there are only a handful of abridged actual musical performances. Dialogue in the form of a narrator is the dominant audio. This one does the job required of it without being overly exciting.

    Some of the vocal performances are from incredibly old and poorly maintained analogue sources. All manner of hiss, crackles, and other bits and pieces intrude over the top of the vocals, although this is pretty much to be expected. There are no apparent audio sync issues.

    Obviously there is no surround or LFE channel use.

Audio Ratings Summary

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Main Menu Audio

Discography

    Eight static pages listing in chronological order some of Ray Charles' releases since 1957.

Trailer

    Four trailers for some of the other titles released by Umbrella Entertainment. These are Bill Wyman's Blues Odyssey, Marvin Gaye - Live in '76, Legends of Rock n Roll Live, and Tony Bennett's New York.

    I can't find any reference to this disc in Region 1, other than on VHS tape.

    Unlike the recent concert disc of Ray Charles' that I reviewed recently, I learnt something about the life and times of the man from watching this one hour documentary. If that's the measure of a good doco then this one served its purpose. He is a man who came from the poorest home imaginable and went blind at age seven, but didn't let either of those handicaps stop him doing what he loved best - making music. He is virtually the man responsible for soul and a true legend in the business. The fact he is still going strong more than fifty years later is a testament to his talent.

    The video is pretty average. Given the state of some of the source material, this is not surprising.

    The audio is workmanlike without resorting to any flashy gimmicks to attract attention.

    The extras are very basic.

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Overall