Yes Indeed!
Compilation Album by Ray Charles
When it became clear that the music market wasn’t interested in 7″ singles only, and that releasing full-length LPs was going to be worth record companies’ time, Atlantic started compiling its artists’ previous singles onto 12″ albums. Ray Charles’ very first album (Ray Charles) was one such disc, and Yes Indeed!, released in October 1958, was the second installment.
Although I avoid Ray Charles compilations, I do count Yes Indeed! as “canonical”, since it’s such an easy way to hear these songs without having to track down all the singles. This exception extends to 1957’s Ray Charles as well as the subsequent What’d I Say and The Genius Sings The Blues compilations.
Yes Indeed! was in fact the fifth Ray Charles album to be released in sixteen months, and his second of October 1958. After Ray Charles, he released two instrumental jazz albums (The Great Ray Charles and, with Milt Jackson, Soul Brothers) and the live At Newport album. The juxtaposition of these releases showed what a wide range of talents and interests Ray had. Yes Indeed!, being a compilation of singles, shows his more popular, R&B hitmaking side.
A let-down with this LP is the cover, which showed teenage fans screaming at some unseen star. An obvious attempt to cash in on the teenage rock and roll fad, the sloppily multi-colored photo doesn’t feel like a Ray Charles record. Atlantic was much more successful with their other Ray album covers, and even Yes Indeed!‘s 1964 re-release had a much nicer and more apropos cover design.
2014 reissue on DOL
The low-budget European label DOL re-released Yes Indeed! in 2014, using the original multi-colored screaming girls cover art. As far as I can tell, this reissue did not use the original studio tapes, and may have in fact been sourced from a CD of the album, the fifty-year copyright having run out in Europe. Look for original Atlantic copies of this vinyl LP to make sure you’re getting the best sound.
Record covers
Record labels
Track listing
Fourteen songs are on the Yes Indeed! compilation, representing eight A-sides and six B-sides. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the track selection, as they are out of chronological order and don’t all come from seven singles.
The earliest recording comes from Ray’s second-ever Atlantic single, and the latest are the two sides of an April 1958 single. Ray’s then-most current singles were left off this LP; they’d appear on the compilation album What’d I Say in September 1959.
Side A
1. “What Would I Do Without You”
2. “It’s All Right”
3. “I Want To Know”
4. “Yes Indeed”
5. “Get On The Right Track Baby”
6. “Talkin’ ‘Bout You”
7. “Swanee River Rock (Talkin’ ‘Bout That River)”
Side B
1. “Lonely Avenue”
2. “Blackjack”
3. “The Sun’s Gonna Shine Again”
4. “I Had A Dream”
5. “I Want A Little Girl”
6. “Heartbreaker”
7. “Leave My Woman Alone”
Listen to Yes Indeed!
Get your own Yes Indeed! on LP, CD or MP3 from Amazon. Or get the complete Atlantic recordings 7xCD box set.
