Crying Time

Album by Ray Charles

Info

Released: January 1966
Label: ABC 544
Availability: LP and CD

Is Crying Time the best album of Ray Charles’ career?

One could make a strong case that it is. Crying Time was released in January 1966, and was the first album that Ray made after spending several weeks at a facility in Los Angeles, kicking heroin cold turkey. It was the culmination of years of drug busts, erratic behavior, and finally some soul searching over his wounded pride.

But one worry above all nagged at Ray, demanding an answer: Heroin, heroin, what to do about heroin?
– Michael Lydon, Ray Charles: Man and Music

The end of Ray Charles’ heroin years

Heroin had been a major part of Ray’s life for nearly twenty years, and he had always defended his use of it (and would continue to do so his whole life even after his use stopped, much like Keith Richards). But several drug busts piled up and he started to see that, although what he put into his body ought to be his own business, it didn’t actually work that way legally or publicly. He decided he had to quit, or end up dead or in jail, losing everything.

In August 1965 he checked into St. Francis Hospital in south Los Angeles, went through the fabled three days of violent vomit spasms and diarrhea, then spent a few weeks recuperating, learning to play chess and indulging in some smuggled-in marijuana to pass the time.

It was in October 1965 that he began recording, now clean, at his own R.P.M. Studios in LA. The stress and pressure of his celebrity life and the physical and emotional shock of suddenly casting aside his needle-crutch had put Ray in deeply pensive, reflective mood. Crying Time reflects a remarkable talent at a remarkable time.

The versatile Mr. Ray Charles

There is a range of music on Crying Time – the liner notes are even titled “the Versatile Mr. Ray Charles” – but there is a definite unity of feeling across the twelve songs. Country, blues, and orchestral music – sometimes slow, sometimes speedy; here sparse, there busy – all coexist as supporting players to the album’s main star: the anguish and redemption of Ray Charles.

The opening track, Buck Owens’ brokenhearted country lament “Crying Time”, is about a man who strongly suspects his woman is leaving him, something he has experienced so many times before. Typical country fare, perhaps, but Ray’s version drips with a sense of a greater upheaval. Sweet, lonesome, and beautiful, the LP’s title track is a perfect recording and could have been created by no other person at no other time.

“No Use Crying” and “Tears”, along with the title track, recall the 1964 album Sweet And Sour Tears, on which every song had “cry” or “tear” in the title. But while that album’s theme had been chosen consciously, it feels like a coincidence here, brought on by Ray’s true feelings and not any clever intellectual concept. Ray co-wrote the humorous “Peace Of Mind”, about the realities and pressures of being a star (“the bus was too slow, so I bought me a plane / I can’t find happiness even when I’m flying / That’s why I’d give it all up for a little peace of mind”).

As quiet and spooky as “No Use Crying” is, “Let’s Go Get Stoned” by Ashford and Simpson is noisy and, dare I say it, fun. Despite late-1960s slang, it’s about alcohol, not drugs, and tells the tale of a man who just wants to drink with his friends from his defensive and self-serving perspective. Overt heartache may be absent on this song but its contribution to the feel of the Crying Time album is incalculable.

Elsewhere, Ray re-recorded a track he had first laid down in 1950 as “I’ve Had My Fun”; here it is renamed “Going Down Slow” and is much slower and more grim. A message from a dying man to his soon-to-be-grieving mother, the song is as sad as any Ray ever recorded. With overpowering pathos, and like Side 2’s “Drifting Blues”, “Going Down Slow” is awash in death, loneliness, and sorrow.

Two Percy Mayfield songs come one after the other on Side 2: “We Don’t See Eye To Eye”, a swinging, melodic warning that a relationship will end if she doesn’t straighten up; and, for Ray, the rare social comment of “You’re In For A Big Surprise”, about a black man objecting to a white man’s assumption that he is superior – he pities the racist and promises in no uncertain terms that a social evening out is coming.

The physical addiction is something you can put behind you in ninety-six hours. But the psychological addiction is the real crusher, that’s the bitch.
– Ray Charles on quitting heroin

After Ray’s amazing life experiences – fame, money, women – and his problems – blindness, a family plagued with death, drugs – the events of 1965 caused some soul-searching the likes of which he hadn’t done in some time. The fragile and tentative post-smack rebirth that began after his three days of cold turkey hell, and his fearless confronting of the many demons that still remained, all mix together in a stew that makes Crying Time a masterpiece of genius, a real document of humanity at its lowest – but also its most determined. There is a distant pinprick of light in the darkness, and Ray is clamoring up towards it.

The cover of Crying Time

The album jacket of Crying Time is one of Ray’s better ones, especially considering how mocked most of his ABC-era record covers have been over the years. On a solid, dark blue album (lighter on different pressings) is a simple black charcoal sketch of Ray Charles from the neck up. His head is back, but not in his famous smiling pose or in mid-song; his mouth is closed and there is no expression detectable.

The dark colors contrast well with the orange and yellow of the artist name and album title, and overall George S. Whiteman’s design is simple, blue, and stark, a perfect match for the music inside.