The Genius of Ray Charles

The Genius of Ray Charles is a studio album by Ray Charles, released in October 1959 on Atlantic Records and produced by Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler, the album that gave Charles the title 'The Genius,' a designation that Wexler applied and that stuck as the defining characterization of his musical intelligence. The album is split between two sides with distinct approaches: a big band side with arrangements by Ralph Burns and Quincy Jones, and a strings-and-voices side with arrangements by Ralph Burns, demonstrating Charles's ability to inhabit both jazz orchestral and pop-orchestral contexts with equal authority. Charles did not write the majority of the material, drawing from American standards and popular songs as well as blues originals; 'Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying' and 'Tell Me You'll Wait for Me' are among the principal tracks. The Quincy Jones arrangements, representing one of the earliest professional collaborations between two of the 20th century's most significant musicians, give the big band side a particular sonic ambition that looks forward to the Jones-Charles collaborations that would produce Genius + Soul = Jazz in 1961. The Genius of Ray Charles reached the top twenty on the Billboard Pop Albums chart and was the last Charles album on Atlantic before his move to ABC-Paramount in 1959.