Friendship by Ray Charles (Vinyl record album review)

Album name: Friendship

Artist name: Ray Charles

Year: 1984

Number of discs: one

Label: Columbia Records

Collection: Essex

Distinguishing characteristics:

Price sticker on back: $4.99

Buy it on Amazon: $6.01

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’m not familiar with this record, but I did review A Message from the People (1972) six weeks ago. It was all right.

What I expected

I’m not sure what to expect. The back of the album features ten photographs, one for each song, each featuring Ray Charles and, apparently, whoever accompanied him on that song (hence, “friendship,” apparently). They tend towards country stars.

What it was actually like

This was, in fact, a country record, almost evenly divided between some ok songs that were all upbeat and decent, if unremarkable, and some easy listening atrocities.

I enjoyed Two Old Cats Like Us (with Hank Williams Jr.), which was danceable and a bit goofy, with a nice harmonica part; This Old Heart (Is Gonna Rise Again) (with the Oak Ridge Boys), which started out slow, but turned into a pretty basic and repetitive, but fine, Oompa Loompa song; We Didn’t See a Thing (with Chet Atkins and George Jones); and Friendship (with Ricky Skaggs, who is emphatically not the same person as Boz Scaggs).

Some lowlights from the rest of the songs included Rock and Roll Shoes (with B. J. Thomas), which sounded the most synthetic; Little Hotel Room (with Merle Haggard), which almost got me to stop listening in the middle; and Seven Spanish Angels (with Willie Nelson), which had a terrible orchestral backing at parts.

Crazy Old Soldier (with Johnny Cash) was far from one of Cash’s best, but I did think that the steel guitar echo effect was cool.

Grade

2/5: weak, but I was able to listen to the whole thing