Ray Charles Live In Concert With The Edmonton Symphony (1981)

This concert was recorded on 27 January 1981 at The Jubilee Auditorium, in Edmonton, Canada. The video was directed by John Blanchard and produced by Nicolas Wry. The first Canadian broadcast was on or around 6 August 1981.

Ray Charles was accompanied by 'The ITV Concert Orchestra' (i.e. actually The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sid Feller, and enhanced with Ray's own rhythm section - Peter Turre, James Polk, Joe Harris, and Tony Matthews - while  "Dan Marcus, Mitch Manker, and Clifford [Solomon] were brought in as ringers for the horns (and Cliff rehearsed the non-string stuff, which Ray counted off anyway)."*
The Raelettes were Stella Yarbrough, Madelyn Quebec, Trudy Cohran, Pat Peterson, and Avis Harrell.

The playlist was:

1. Intro
2. Riding Thumb
3. Busted
4. Georgia On My Mind
5. Oh, What A Beautiful Morning
6. Some Enchanted Evening 
7. Intro Raelettes
8. Hit The Road Jack
9. I Can't Stop Loving You
10. Take These Chains From My Heart
11. I Can See Clearly Now
12. Lonesome Blue Yodel + I'm Gonna Keep On Singin' + Feel Good**
13. America The Beautiful

Magazine ad from 1985.

First released on optical disc in 1982 as An Evening With Ray Charles by Optical Programming Associates (74-612 LV); and as such was featured in the Pioneer campaign in '84. In 1985 the concert was released by MCA on VHS (MCA also syndicated the show for TV; see ad). The latest release was on DVD (Eagle Rock, 21 September 2004, B0002WZTHA).

* Information kindly provided by Peter Turre, who recalls that They Can't Take That Away From Me was also on the setlist. ** Improv with the Hank Williams tune, part of Keep On Singin' as we know it from Rare Genius, and a call & response-variation on What'd I Say (without even singing that line).

Full concert: