From Unsung, a documentary about Preston (I think it's from 2011).
Preston, in an interview about Ray, c. 1991.
Billy Preston had been Ray Charles' protégé since his teenager years. The taping of Shindig, in 1965, was the first time they worked together professionally. Right after that Preston contributed decisively to the hot blues-gospel sound of the Crying Time album.
Orchestra & Chelsea Brown, 1967.
Orchestra, Raelettes, Chelsea, Billy, 1967.
From 1966 to 1968, before becoming the '5th Beatle', Billy joined the Ray Charles group on a series of tours in the U.S. and abroad (in '69 they took some incidental gigs together). 1967 was the year of The Ray Charles Show, later in the year of the All New Ray Charles Show. It seems as if Charles felt in 1967 that it was necessary to add more production value to his concerts, probably as a response to all soul revues that were travelling the world in that year. In the most extended versions of The Ray Charles Show, everybody filled their own segments: the Orchestra, The Raelettes, dancer Chelsea Brown, and Billy Preston.
However, the casts differed from tour to tour, and sometimes even from gig to gig. In 1968 everything went back to normal again, with the exception of the Europe tour, in which Billy co-starred. The artwork of the (hand)bills and ads shows how poorly concert organizers were provided with promotional materials - and how independent they were in compiling their own messages. Read this for a contemporary review of Billy's part in the show.
May 1967: double concert at Carnegie Hall, New York, only co-billing The Raelettes.
Pages from Australian (August '67) and U.S.('68) tour brochures: announcing different mixes of The Raelettes, Billy Preston, Chelsea Brown, The Ray Charles Orchestra, and - highly intriguing - also "The Band Within A Band - The Original Ray Charles Orchestra" - I don't have a clue what kind of act this was.
Also in August, Ray gave this concert in the U.S., with a full "revue" line-up, including Raelettes, Billy Preston and dancer Chelsea Brown.
Poster from a U.S. gig in November, obviously without Preston.
These two pics come from a 1967 yearbook of the University of Massachusetts; the one below is the first photo I have ever seen of Billy Preston performing during a concert with Ray: Looking at how Billy moves in this photo, it could well be that he's performing Agent Double-O-Soul (as we know it from The Ed Sullivan Show (aired on December 3, 1967):
4 May 1968 at Carnegie Hall, New York.
7 May 1968: University of North Dakota Field House, Grand Forks.
17 May 1968: Winston-Salem Memorial Coliseum.
4 to 9 June 1968: Melodyland, OrangeCounty.
Sacramento, 1 August 1968.
4 October 1968: Jahrhunderthalle, Frankfurt.
5 October 1968: Concertgebouw, Amsterdam.
8 October 1968: La Salle Pleyel, Paris.
Here are the unforgettable renditions of Going Down Slow and A Tear Fell, with brother Billy Preston tearing hot tears from his B3 at the October '68 concert in Paris:
18 October 1968: QueenElizabethTheatre, Vancouver.
24 October 1968: Men’s Gym, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.
28 October - 4 November 1968: Regal Theatre, Chicago.
Around 1970 Ray and Billy seriously discussed doing a duet album together, but that plan failed “because of our different contracts”, as Ray told Gavin Petrie (in: Black Music, Hamlyn, 1974).
"If it's really something good that was not on the record, that's okay, because when I perform I can make the performance of the song better than the record was."
The Genie
Ray Charles at the Apollo (Apr. or maybe Oct. 1959), working on his Wurlitzer. Photo by Alex Harsley.
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About
The Ray Charles Video Museum is a research project, documenting live performances by The Genius.
This blog is above all aMediagraphy. It's also a discography (or, more correctly, a trackography), aggregating all tunes that Ray sang and/or played - including the "canon" of 700 tracks listed on the official Ray Charles website, but also identifying the songs that have never been officially released, and e.g. the recordings of other artists, where Ray backed them on piano. Thirdly, this blog has evolved into a multimedia Chronology (click the years in the panel al the top of this page) of Ray's productive live.
I also try to do some justice to the more than 1,000 great musicians and singers who contributed to Ray's career (1, 2).
The Quotes page lists the wisest, craziest and funniest things that the Genius ever said. If you want to read more about Brother Ray, go here.
The availability of the streaming video and audio content on this blog is constantly under pressure. Some rights owners still think that sharing these videos damages their sales. I'm keeping disfunctional clips as placeholders - to show that the footage exists, and to replace them when new uploads appear on the Web.
The articles in this blog are continuously updated and improved. Your help is more than welcome.
The Bishop seduces the world with his voice
Sweat strangles mute eyes
As insinuations gush out through a hydrant of sorrow
Dreams, a world never seen
Mounded on Africa's anvil, tempered down home
Documented in cries and wails
Screaming to be ignored, crooning to be heard
Throbbing from the gutter
On Saturday night
Silver offering only,
The Right Reverend's Back in Town
Don't it make you feel all right?
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