A couple years ago, I wrote Rhino about all the digitally unreleased Ray Charles albums, but never received a response. They've taken great care of his collection in alot of ways, but in others they've been neglectful. Alot of these albums never sold well, so there may be limited incentive to release them to put it mildly, but maybe if there are any other Ray die-hards out there we can get them at least thinking about it.

Most of his work from the mid-60s on is not looked upon in a positive light since it pales in comparison to his groundbreaking 50s & early 60s recordings, but Ray's 1965-1989 work has aged extremely well by any standard. From the scattered albums and tracks available from his 60s, 70s, and 80s work, it's quickly apparent there are alot of great underappreciated treasures on these releases just waiting to be rediscovered. For many of his country albums, almost the whole of some of them were put out on "The Complete Country and Western Recordings" However, as wonderful a job as Rhino did, it doesn't come close to living up to it's "complete" claim (and in fairness, how could it without it becoming unwieldy?), leaving off sometimes 1 or 2 tracks of some albums, several tracks of others. Similarly, almost all of "Live in Concert" was released on Rhino Handmade's "In Concert" and the 50th anniversary boxset, but again we still fall short of having the whole thing, much less in one place as is particularly important with live albums. Few other artists of such great, universal esteem have such a large portion of their catalog neglected in the digital age. All in all, it comes to 25 full albums, and several non-album tracks.

The format they were following for their 50th anniversary tributes in 1997 of including either 2 full albums on 1 CD where possible, or 1 album with several bonus tracks where applicable (in order to take care of all the plethora of unreleased non-album sides), would probably be the most logical release pattern for both Rhino and Ray's fans.

1965--Live in Concert
1965--Country and Western Meets Rhythm and Blues
1966--Crying Time
1966--Ray's Moods
1967--A Man and His Soul
1967--Ray Charles Invites You to Listen
1969--Portrait of Ray (available a couple years ago as limited import pressing from a small French label, pretty hard to find now)
1969--I'm All Your's, Baby
1969--Doing His Thing
1970--Love Country Style
1971--Volcanic Action of My Soul
1972--A Message From the People
1973--Through the Eyes of Love
1973--My Kind of Jazz, Vol. 2
1974--Come Live With Me
1975--Renaissance
1975--My Kind of Jazz, Vol. 3
1975--Live in Japan (vinyl released only in Japan, probable illicit CD copies are currently popping up on eBay)
1976--Porgy and Bess (w/Cleo Laine) (it seems there may have been a limited CD pressing in the 80s, but copies are exceedingly rare and usually go for over $100)
1977--True to Life
1978--Love and Peace
1979--Ain't It So
1980--Brother Ray is At It Again
1984--Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?
1986--From the Pages of My Mind (possibly had a limited CD pressing when first released, but have only ever seen one copy pop up, on eBay, and that was years ago...can't verify if it was legit)

If this post receives a positive response, I'll gather the details on all digitally unreleased non-album sides. Thanks for listening!

-JohnGris

Some of my fondest memories from back in the '60s was hanging out next door at my neighbor's house where my first two friends lived. While they were taking their afternoon naps, their Mom would go and put on Ray Charles and Nat King Cole records for me to listen to until later in the afternoon when they woke up. They had one of those big fat stereo consoles that many people bought back then-including my parents as well. I would bet money that a couple of the albums listed above were ones I listened to.