Ray Charles

Brother Ray's initial foray into standards is a career highlight. For the first half, Charles' old friend Quincy Jones crafts hard-swinging big band charts that match Ray's band with stars from the Ellington and Basie organizations. Ralph Burns arranges the jazz-meets-string-orchestra second half, which features "Just for a Thrill" and "Come Rain or Come Shine."

An eclectic standards collection ranging from "Alexander's Ragtime Band" to "Come Rain or Come Shine" to the Percy Mayfield blues "Two Years of Torture" was the brainchild and love child of producers Jerry Wexler and Nesuhi Ertegun, who noodged five different arrangers into the subtlest charts of Charles's career. Charles tried many times, but except for Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music he never again assembled such a consistent album in this mode. (Grade - )