They Say It’s Wonderful (By Jimmy Scott, Ray Charles On Piano)

Album3: Jimmy Scott: Falling In Love Is Wonderful, Tangerine, TRC 1501, 1963.

Taped at the United Recordings Studios in Hollywood, in 1962.

Arranged by Marty Paich.

Jimmy Scott: “The record was completed in just a few sessions. I don’t think we did more than two takes on any one tune. There wasn’t any overdubbing either. It was all-the-way live. The fiddlers were fiddling. Ray was playing, and I was singing, all at the same time. When we were through, everyone was thrilled – me, Ray and the arrangers. We knew we had a hit.”
As arranger Gerald Wilson tells it in the liner notes to the 2003 reissue of the album, “Ray supervised, but he did so from the piano. He played on every track. And he made sure we wrote charts that gave his piano space. If you listen to the record carefully, it’s really a long and intimate conversation between Ray’s sensitive piano and Jimmy’s sensitive voice.”

Unfortunately, the other musicians were not credited.