Ray’s Boogie (With The Ray Charles Septet)

This instrumental, a Ray Charles composition, was never recorded.

Ray Charles established his first “small big band” in 1954. Renald Richard was the first band leader. In an interview with Joël Dufour (published in Soul Bag, January 2004, #176 & 177) he recalled, “One of [Ray’s] first band arrangements was Ray’s Boogie. So what he’d do, he would dictate note for note. Like he would say: ‘The baritone will start on the second space A…’ He would dictate every part, one at a time, out of his head, not referring to any (Braille) score… and he was always right. He never made a mistake! He had a fantastic mind for that. […] He always liked to play Ray’s Boogie. He liked to play alto-sax on that. […H]e never recorded Ray’s Boogie. It’s a typical boogie-woogie, you know. It was his composition and we used to play that at almost every concert because it had a nice groove to it, a nice swing. We all liked it. Fathead would just blow you away on that too […].”