Ray Charles - was "Some Day Baby" recorded for Atlantic?

In 1961 Atlantic released an album of blues recordings by Ray Charles. The LP was called "The Genius Sings The Blues":



I was familiar with all the tracks except "Some Day Baby" which I had never heard before getting this re-issue.

My question is - where does this fantastic track originate from? It isn't on "The Birth Of Soul" which supposedly collects all the R&B recordings Ray made at Atlantic. It isn't even on the recent box set "Pure Genius: The Complete Atlantic Recordings (1952-1959)"!

It sounds very clean - not like the heavily compressed Tom Dowd Atlantic sound at all. Is this track actually from his time at ABC/Paramount - seeing as the LP came out in 1961, after Ray had already moved to ABC/Paramount from Atlantic, is it possible the track was given to Atlantic as part of some kind of deal?!

Please, put me out of misery - where does this amazing track come from?!

 

bump

 

The Rhino comp Blues + Jazz lists the song as "Worried Life Blues" and gives the session as a rehearsal date (5/17/53). That would put it in the Atlantic era. Hope this helps!

 

I had ruled out this track as being from his pre-Atlantic days based on sound quality alone. The recording is superb - just Ray and a piano in all its glory. I think the pre-Atlantic recordings only exist on disc (and dubs off those discs) - were they even recorded onto tape in the first place?

Still, I found a sample of the track you refer to on Amazon (see here) just to check and sure enough it is a completely different song/recording.

Strangely, the lyrics you quoted are from the track I'm talking about!!

Actually, while writing this post I have discovered the answer to my question! From what I gathered using google, "Some Day Baby" was Ray Charles' version of a Big Maceo track called "Worried Life Blues". I just looked through the tracklist for "Pure Genius: The Complete Atlantic Recordings (1952-1959)" again and lo and behold a track called "Worried Life Blues" is on disc 7!!

Looks like I will have to shell out for that box set anyway - you can't have too much Atlantic era Ray Charles .

 

Looks like we both figured this one out at the same time

Thanks for the session date - it's a really great sound for such an early Atlantic session. I wonder if Tom Dowd wasn't the engineer for this one?......

Not that I don't like the Tom Dowd sound! I love it - but it is great to hear early 50's Ray like he is in the room with you for a change.

 

Hey Mal,
Sorry, I edited my post into oblivion. I had a brain flatulence and was thinking of the Swing Time cut "Someday", but when I got the disc down I remembered that the cut I was thinking of was "Worried Life Blues", so I edited my post to reflect that. Looks like you saw both versions of my post. Confusing!