WHAT’D I SAY, RAY CHARLES WITH HIS ORCHESTRA (1959)

 

One of soul’s earliest milestone 45s, the wildly inf uential What’d I Say was improvised live onstage by Charles and his backing singers, The Raelettes. The call-and-response style was inspired by the church music that Brother Ray was brought up on, but the “sweet sounds of love”, as he put it, certainly were not.