Through The Eyes Of Love
Album by Ray Charles
Coming a mere three months after the excellent A Message From The People LP, Ray Charles’ Through The Eyes Of Love album of August 1972 is an excellent collection of eight mostly slow and romantic songs that stand in stark contrast to the pointed political commentary of that preceding album.
Despite the quality of the material on Through The Eyes Of Love, it seems to have been something of vanity project for Ray and not the record-buying public. In August 1972, ABC/Tangerine was still in the middle of a series of singles promoting A Message From The People and there was no commercial need whatsoever for Through The Eyes Of Love. So, no singles were released at the time (one was months later – see below).
But it’s no longer 1972 – now, free of concurrent market realities, modern ears can listen to and judge Through The Eyes Of Love based solely on its music. Its Sid Feller-arranged songs tend to the soaring, soupy, and diaphanous, though there are (very) occasional moments of urgency and even comedy sprinkled here and there.
About the songs on Through The Eyes Of Love
The LP eases in with “My First Night Alone Without You”, a riveting and slow-burning piece veritably crammed with tension: careening, wailing strings and sudden, loudly-mixed piano fills jump out of the speakers and demand attention. The song’s complex chord structure lends it a feeling of formlessness, underlining the miserable emotional wandering of the lyric.
The situation of the first song continues into the second, “I Can Make It Thru The Days (But Oh Those Lonely Nights)”, which features a very rare co-writer credit for Ray himself, who wrote very few songs after 1960. But the feeling is more light-hearted and conventional in structure. This one has a strong gospel feel with its church organ and spirited backing choir recalling “Let’s Go Get Stoned” from the Crying Time album.
The Gershwins’ drippingly romantic and melodic “Someone To Watch Over Me” follows, and Ray is totally sympathetic as he croons believably about being that “little lamb who’s lost in the wood”. The syrupy strings are always present right behind the achingly delicate but richly textured tenor.
The final song on Side 1 is Paul Williams’ “A Perfect Love”, another lush ballad that quickens the pace of the album somewhat but exists in the same fragile emotional space as the preceding tracks. The vocals on “A Perfect Love” are especially remarkable, with some stunning melodic twists and just enough words packed into each line to give them a daring immediacy. Those lyrics also provide the blurb on the album’s back cover:
“Old enough to know when I’ve been wrong,
yet fool enough to think I still might change.”
Is this Ray’s reflection on his life and career at age 41?
Side 2 of Through The Eyes Of Love opens with one of the best Ray Charles singalong tunes from this period, “If You Wouldn’t Be My Lady”: its verses are restrained and decorated with a sweeping orchestra over Ray’s shivering electric piano and playfully slurred singing, but the choruses find him finally able to engage in some of the anguished cries that came from him with such natural and inexorable force.
On “You Leave Me Breathless”, Ray sighs and pants directly into the microphone over the plodding, dense track, on which he adds his own expertly-played but (mostly) unshowy piano. The song is a joyous celebration of a woman’s beauty and so with the sadness of Side 1’s laments evaporated for the time being, Ray plays a more confident role, following the tricky melody wherever it leads and confidently relishing each syllable in (and adding more to) words like “breathless” and “speechless”.
Ray duets with himself on Delaney and Bonnie’s “Never Ending Song Of Love”, a rollicking and bright orchestrated R&B with crazily audacious string and brass arrangements – the normally sober Sid Feller at his strangest. The song is very short, acting as a brief respite to balance out the murky romanticism of the previous tracks and to set up to the final song on Through The Eyes Of Love, the absorbing and magnificent “Rainy Night In Georgia”.
Ray stretches this slow-to-mid-tempo elegy out over six minutes and plays electric piano throughout. A gentle choir and some strings enhance the performance without stepping into Ray’s spotlight: that electric piano and his alternately touching and hilarious singing are the clear stars here. Towards the end, Brother Ray indulges in an exaggerated drunk voice for comic effect.
Returning lyrically to his own home state of Georgia, whiling away a palpably rainy night with his “last little half-pint”, Ray Charles brings this quick but rewarding album to a familiar and appropriate close.
Record covers
“Conceived”, as the liner notes say, by Ray Charles’ manager and career overseer Joe Adams and completed by designer Don Hiehaus, the cover of Through The Eyes Of Love doesn’t really do the album any favors. It’s a simple concept – a drawing of purple satin on which sits a pair of black sunglasses, with the artist’s and album’s names written in fancy script above and below.
It follows in that curious tradition of many of Ray’s infamous album covers from the 1965-75 era: ideas that seem ok, executed well enough, but somehow still not feeling quite right. It’s as if the music contained within Through The Eyes Of Love is already pink and plush enough, and the album needs an image to counterbalance the music, not reflect it.
But as a piece of pop art it’s pretty good, and you have to give them credit for trying something new. The back cover is better, featuring a blurry and indistinct black and white photo of Ray’s face centered on a white background, overlaid with a rose whose bright red petals provide the only color.
Record labels
Singles with songs from Through The Eyes Of Love
“Claudie Mae”
b/w
“Someone To Watch Over Me”
Track listing
Side A
1. “My First Night Alone Without You”
2. “I Can Make It Thru The Days (But Oh Those Lonely Nights)”
3. “Someone To Watch Over Me”
4. “A Perfect Love”
Side B
1. “If You Wouldn’t Be My Lady”
2. “You Leave Me Breathless”
3. “Never Ending Song Of Love”
4. “Rainy Night In Georgia”
Listen to Through The Eyes Of Love
Vinyl copies of the Through The Eyes Of Love LP are very easy to find, and fans of Ray Charles records usually don’t have to wait too long to find a copy in great shape for a cheap price. Watch sales listings; you might even find a still-sealed vintage copy from time to time.
Get your own Through The Eyes Of Love on LP or MP3 from Amazon.
A Message From The People
Through The Eyes Of Love
Jazz Number II