Customer Reviews
Don't be turned away by the title 
2006-06-16
One of my favorite albums (and all-time favorite album titles). Enjoyable even if you are not a fan of country and western music. Ray Charles performs these songs with his own unique style and sound (IMHO - most, if not all, of Ray's performances are superior to the originals).
Broke the Rules and Reinvented Them 2006-04-24
When Ray Charles moved from Atlantic to ABC, the label expected to get a big selling R&B artist with enough appeal to cross over to pop audiences. Ray at first complied to this narrow view of him and his talents. He started at ABC with big R&B hits as Unchain my Heart. He felt he owed it to the label to give them what they expected. They had just given him an unprecedented contract in which he would keep the rights over his masters and gave him complete artistic freedom. Ray knew his time would come. Soon he made his wish known he wanted to record a record with Country tunes. This idea was met with great apprehension. This doubt in the concept was not without grounds. The R&B world and the country world were at the time still very separate entities. Black artist playing white music was not done in the record industry. Ray went ahead and broke the rules, succeeding marvelously, just as he did when he mixed R&B and Gospel a few years prior.
Yet the record itself is not strictly a crossing between R&B and Country. Ray chose the Big Band approach to the songs. His take of Country was more the classic American Songbook view. Ray was not new to Jazz, having recorded in the medium before. Back at Atlantic he worked with parts of the Basie Orchestra and Quincy Jones on Jazz Standards. So he felt quite at ease here. He wasn't new to Country either. He'd grown up with the Grand Ole Opry shows on the radio and allegedly worked as a piano played in Hill Billy bands down south. His comfort with both styles shines through on this record. Here Charles reworks Hank Williams and Don Gibson classics as You Win Again and I Can't Stop Loving You and creates new rules in the process.
A couple years down the line the mixture of Black and White music would become very common. Record labels as Stax and Hi Records in Memphis build there house styles around in it. Fame studios would excel in it. When Ray dropped this gem on the market it hit like a bomb. Modern Sounds became one of his biggest selling records ever and artistically one of his most compelling.
Wanted this one for a long time 2006-02-24
I had this album a long time ago in college and loved it. It was great to catch up with it again.
One Of Ray's Shining Gems 
2006-02-11
This superb album of country music by the great Ray Charles was rereleased and remastered in this 1990 version. These are not the only country songs Ray took on with such ease, there is also a box set of country tunes. The first track on this is, in my opinion, the worse. 'Bye Bye Love' just doesn't cut it for some reason or other. Note 'Here We Go Again' is pre Norah Jones and Ray Charles duet but a great version nevertheless.Wonderful keyboards!!
Flawed masterpiece that works in spite of itself 2005-05-11
It would foolhardy to get the album "Modern Sounds in Country and Western" and expect Ray Charles to adhere to the strict country sound of the originals which he covers. After all, you're talking about the man who singlehandedly straddled both the pop and R&B charts for much of the Fifties and Sixties by doing his own thing. Instead, Ray brings his trademark style to fifteen great standards, and the results are mixed for more modern listeners. The album as a whole, however, is a must-have.
The record titled "Modern Sounds in Country and Western" is actually an amalgimation of the first such record to be released under that title in 1962, and a selection from the second album that followed later. I'd like to see the second album released in total on CD if it's not already.
Starting off with a swinging, fantastic version of the Everly Brothers' classic "Bye Bye Love" (which Ray now owns pretty much by virtue of this performance, in my mind), the pace slows down considerably for the heart-rending "You Don't Know Me". Followed by "Half as Much" and "I Love You So Much It Hurts", this is a one-two-three punch of the syrupy string and vocal arrangements Charles was branching out into around the time of his label swtich from Atlantic to the more mainstream ABC-Paramount Records. Each song is fantastic in its own regard, and less beholden to the more mellow sound than the following tracks of a similar stripe.
Ray busts through the melancholy with "Just a Little Lovin'", which is easily one of the best tunes I've ever heard. "Born to Lose" is a little hard to take after such an emotional high, but you can easily skip over "Lovin'" if you want to experience it on its own terms. "Worried Mind" suffers from sappy melodrama, as does "You Win Again", but the rest of the record (including the classics "I Can't Stop Loving You", "Hey Good Lookin'", and "Here We Go Again") strike the right balance between the sappy sound of Ray's band and the grit of the originals.
All in all, this will be a bit of a culture shock to anyone born post-Dean Martin, in terms of its exercises in sappy strings and overwrought back-up singers. In some ways, Ray is more at the mercy of the music than vice versa, which leads to some unsatisfying tracks. But on a whole, the album works because it showcases the appreciation Charles had for country and western, and the way he was able to translate this love into a seismacly important album. Far more than just a great record, this album thumbed its nose at the charts and showed what a hit crossover could be for serious artists.
"Modern Sounds In Country and Western" may suffer in some ways for its reliance on the contemporary tastes of 1962. But it works more than often on the strength of the music and Ray's impassioned singing. He was one of those rare talents who actually could sing the phone book and make it enjoyable. Artists like Ray are hard to come by these days, and "Modern Sounds" showcases why.
"RAY CHARLES"- Modern Sounds 2008-04-28
On the very best list of 1962 and 1960's albums, Ray Charles'"Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music" has to be on a top and prominent place on that distinguished list. The main jewels of that royal crown are "I Can't Stop Loving You" definitely the top hit song of 1962, played and played not only for that entire year but subsequently. The others top hits in that album were "Born to Lose" originally the flip side on the former 45 rpm single version and "You Don't Know Me". Bonus tracks were added on this great compilation. Perhaps the only missing Ray Charles musical jewel in this great musical compilation is "Georgia On My Mind". If they would've added that song to this fabulous album, it would've been an unprecedented collector's item and best seller.
A trail-blazing LP that stll plucks an emotional chord... 2008-02-04
Mr. Charles knew good lyrics when he heard them, and he didn't think the message of a song had to be confined to the style in which it was originally composed. Back in 1961, when much of the country still considered rhythm and blues artists to be makers of "race records" and even more of the nation thought that "country music" could only be created by Southern whites, Ray took a bunch of the best songs he could find from country artists, added an orchestra, a backing vocal group, and his "soul" sensibilities and produced this record. My sister bought it, and I was a senior in high school and wore it out. I already knew most of the tunes because I was a country fan, albeit living in New Jersey. Although "backing vocals" and "orchestral accompaniment" are terms that have largely disappeared from the labels of Top Forty singles, they work on this album better than on most from the era. Not every track here is a masterpiece, but about half of them bear up to repeated play, even continuous play, quite well. "You Don't Know Me" and "Born to Lose" and "Worried Mind" and "You Win Again" and "I Can't Stop Loving You" brought black and white artists and songwriters and fans a lot closer to the mainstream market. Rock and Roll was still young in '62, and the "Nashville Sound" was just getting off the ground. Thanks to Ray, bridges were built, friendships were cemented, and genres were combined in a way that benefitted music lovers around the world. I had not heard this album in about 40 years until I bought the CD version last week. It is good to have an old friend back in my home.
Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music 2007-03-16
Can anyone say anything negative about Ray Charles? Not me either. A fine recording.
Ray's C&W 2007-01-10
This is one of Ray's best. He brings his special brand of jazz, r&b to country-western. If you like Ray Charles, or Country-Western music, you should own this CD.
RAY COULD DO IT "ALL" 2007-01-10
I mean ALL!! He did Country & Western just as good - or should I say better - than the Country/Western Singers!! The "High Priest" (as he was known in the 60's)...no matter what he sang....He did it BETTER than the REST!! Sad to lose him - May He Rest In Peace!! I can hear him now... in Heaven's Choir!!
