RAY CHARLES “What’d I Say” ATLANTIC, 1959
was trying to make a bridge between the jazz scene, which is where I came from originally, and the R&B things that I’d heard. And this tune was a big one for me. I first heard it in a club in Hampstead and I remember going, “Whoa! What the hell is that, man?” I was embarrassed to tell people I loved that cut, because there was a kind of jazz snobbery that reigned around that time. Looking back now, it makes me laugh, because it’s so wonderful. All the singers on the R&B scene
