The singer Tom Petty called the most imitating: “The best that ever was”
Early rock and roll was never that far away from R&B. For all the artists like Chuck Berry and Little Richard, who became the patron saints of the genre the minute that they saw success, they had just as much in common with Curtis Mayfield as they did with Jimi Hendrix. Tom Petty could always appreciate the soulful side of rock and roll, and as far as he was concerned, no one could have held a candle to what Ray Charles could do.
Before rock or soul music started, both of them at least had the same origin: the blues. Whereas classical symphonies were reserved for the nerdy fans of the world and jazz was limited to jam sessions, the blues was always concerned with bringing across raw emotion, whether that was loneliness, heartbreak, or the pure angst of being stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time.
While Berry eventually sped everything up and made it much looser for rock and roll, Charles rode that musical emotion for as long as it would go. Looking through his discography, his touch on the keyboard seemed to combine everything from jazz to blues to rock and roll and mix it into this eclectic stew that was impossible to resist on tracks like ‘What’d I Say’. Even when adopting styles he had no right to pull off so well, Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music is still one of the most brilliant takes on those traditional cowboy songs.
It takes a lot of musical talent to pull off every one of those styles so convincingly, but Charles’s best instrument was always his voice. Much like Willie Nelson in the country world, Charles had a weathered baritone whenever he sang, but by covering such a broad range of styles, he finetuned himself into one of the most expressive singers in the world.
He wasn’t going to be giving Mariah Carey a run for her money or anything, but that was never the point behind his music. It was all about raw pain and heartache, and in any of his songs, his voice is one of a man who has done many miles on his soul and is willing to do anything he can to make sure that he has his love intact.
Petty may have been the furthest thing from traditional R&B, but he couldn’t deny that Charles was in a class all his own, saying, “Ray Charles is probably the best R&B singer there ever was. He invented a style that was picked up by a lot of artists in the later 1950s and 1960s, was probably the most imitated singer ever. His Atlantic recordings are really nice sounding records.”
And it’s not like heartland rock didn’t follow Charles’s lead, either. The entire genre was focused on looking at rock and roll at street level, and some of Petty’s hits like ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’ have the same kind of soulful vocal except with a more aggressive bent to it.
So, while Petty did have a lot of love for artists like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones when he was growing up, he was never looking to be a product of the British Invasion. His songs was about painting a picture of what the US looked like, and if Berry showed everyone what rock and roll could be, Charles opened doors to what someone’s heart could sound like.
