1962: Ray Charles' Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music

The 1973 film American Graffiti, with that great soundtrack (by George Lucas of Indiana Jones and Star Wars fame) takes place in the summer of 1962.  1962 is the year Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a game.  It's the year Marilyn Monroe was found Dead.  It's the year Johnny Carson took over the Tonight Show from Jack Paar.  It's the year of the Cuban Missile crisis and the year James Meredith enrolled at University of Mississippi.  It was also the year I turned 13 becoming an official teenager.

1962 was a great year for movies headed by “Lawrence of Arabia”, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, and “The Miracle Worker”.  It also included a bunch of other good flicks such as the first James Bond movie, “Dr. No”, “Lolita”, “The Manchurian Candidate”, “That Touch of Mink”, “The Birdman of Alcatraz”, “Whatever  Happened to  Baby Jane”, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence”, “Mutiny on the  Bounty”, “The Longest Day”, “Days of Wine and Roses”, “Requiem for a Heavyweight”, and “The Long Day's Journey Into Night”.  However, I am hear to talk about music and one iconic album in particular.

Sadly, 1962 was not much of a year for pop music.  It was a couple of years after the music industry took control and watered-down Rock-n-Roll and it was a couple of years before the Beatles and the British Invasion.  We were largely being fed a steady diet of songs targeted at teenage girls like “Roses Are Red”, “Soldier Boy”, “Johnny Angel”, “All Alone  Am I”, “Bobby's Girl” and “Breaking Up is Hard to Do”.  The Twist came back that year and The Four Seasons came on the scene with their hits “Sherry” and “Big Girls Don't Cry”.  While certainly likable they were not “real” rock-n-roll and really nothing new, at least not to me.  OK, there were a few signs of life like The Contours' “Do You Love Me”.  Both the Beach Boys and Dylan released their first albums during that year.  The Beach Boys' “Surfin' Safari” album had an impact on me.  Dylan's self titled first album was mostly traditional folk songs.  I really hadn't noticed him yet.  The first album of his I remember was his second album, “Free Wheelin'”.  At that time My folk music awareness was limited to the established big names like Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, and The Kingston Trio.  I became a big Dylan fan but my interest in him was mainly a result of his '65 album “Bringing It All Back Home “.  That was the album that irked the folkies causing them to accusing him of “selling out”.   

So, you may be thinking if American Graffiti takes place in 1962 how did it end up with such a fabulous soundtrack?  Well, George Lucas cheated and mostly used rock-n-roll songs from the 50's rock-n-roll era.  In fact, of the entire 40 or so songs used in the movie only two of them were actually from 1962.  However, 1962 did have some good music and in particular there was an album entitled “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music” released by Ray Charles that spring.  

By the summer of 1962, I had just completed my first year of junior high school.  I spent that summer hanging out with my best friends Jimmy and Joe.  Jimmy's older brother Steve had just graduated from high school.  Steve had been a star center and middle line-backer on the school's football team but his passion was music.  He played trumpet in the school's highly acclaimed jazz band and that band was considered one of the best high school jazz bands in the country.  They'd been invited to various college jazz band competitions and had also appeared on the Tonight Show.  Steve received both a football and a music scholarship to a college somewhere in Texas.  When Steve was home there was usually music being played around the house.  He was either playing his horn or was playing records he'd purchased.  That summer he purchased a new Ray Charles album: “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music”.  It seemed like he played it continuously all summer long.  If Steve was home the music from that album would be heard when you got to the house.  You could hear it just sitting on the front door stoop, which is where we often hung out.  Paramount Records had not been too enthusiastic about Ray doing that album at the time, but Ray had insisted.  The single released from that album was “I Can't Stop Loving You”.  It became a big hit and in fact that single turned out to be the biggest hit of Ray's entire career.  The album was a huge success as well and is considered one of the all time great albums. 

I knew of Ray Charles and had heard a few of his songs such as ” What'd I Say”, and “Hit the Road Jack”, the song of his I liked best at that point.  I thought he was OK but all in all I had not really paid much attention to his music.  Like I said, I was just 13 years old.  That summer changed all that.  I had heard a few country singers like Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, and maybe Buck Owens.  Of course I  knew Jimmy Dean's cross-over hit  “Big Bad John”, but Country music was mostly boring to me.  It did not resonate with me and I just did not see the appeal.  I was an urban kid and the closest I got to country music was probably the Everly Brothers and that was because they were on the rock-n-roll scene and that's the scene I lived in.  I needed that rock-n-roll energy, music that made me want to get up and move, something I could release all my teenage angst with.  Hearing that Ray Charles album all summer long gave me a new appreciation for both Ray and Country Music.  Hearing the way Ray was doing country music opened my eyes about it, but mostly about  him.  I subsequently became a big Ray Charles fan and over the years I have purchased lots of Ray's music but his “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music” album is still my favorite.  In fact, it's one of my all time favorite albums period.  I have that album cover hanging up in my room today and according to iTunes it's one of the albums I listen to the most.  (It's so reassuring when iTunes agrees with me.)  It's definitely a “stuck on a desert island” album.

By that summer girls had became a lot more interesting to us and we made a point of saying hi to all the neighborhood girls who would walk by Jimmy's house.  We would watch for them while playing baseball in the street or goofing off on Jimmy's front stoop talking baseball and telling tales all with Steve's music always flowing out to us out through the front screen door.  When I think back to that time, I hear that Ray Charles album and when I hear the songs from that album I am transported back to that summer.  For me the summer of '62 will always be those memories of hanging out at Jimmy's watching the neighborhood girls walk by with the Ray Charles “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music” album as our soundtrack.  A sweet memory indeed.