“Am I Blue”

Ray Charles recorded studio versions of the classic 1929 ballad “Am I Blue” on two separate occasions in his career: once for his landmark 1959 album The Genius Of Ray Charles, and again in 1968 for the album A Portrait Of Ray.

“Am I Blue” was written in 1929 by Grant Clarke, already a popular songwriter at the time, and Harry Akst, a noted pianist and songwriter who would go on to score several movies. This song was a hit when it appeared in the 1929 film On With The Show where it was sung by Ethel Waters; Clarke and Akst wrote several songs for the movie. The movie is notable for being the first all-color and all-talking movie, although no color prints exist.

Since Waters’ iconic version, many artists have covered “Am I Blue”, its gentle melodies and soaring vocal lines being well-suited to crooners and musicians who like a pretty tune but also a technical challenge.

Ray’s 1959 version of “Am I Blue”

When Ray Charles first recorded with a full orchestra for Side 2 of his surprising and stunning final Atlantic album, The Genius Of Ray Charles, he included “Am I Blue” among its dense and rewarding treasures. With a thickly sweet arrangement by Ralph Burns the song swells on bounteous clouds of sound and is pulled higher towards heaven by the insistently trilling flute, whose high notes are matched by the upper registers of Ray’s clinking piano keys.

As throughout the album, Mr. C’s vocals on this version of “Am I Blue” are absolutely perfect: heartbreakingly fragile, his timbre just a touch uneven in all the right places, and deep and resonant in others. He exudes pain and fear and loss, but a supreme confidence in his singing, simultaneously. Ray is gripping when he sings this song; listeners will find it hard to turn away while he pours out his heart.

Ray may not have written the song, but its sentiments and its melodies resonate with his own soul; with the balancing effect of the cinematic orchestra and the cool, angelic choir, Ray’s own innate warmth and honesty burst from every second of his performance.

Ray’s 1968 version of “Am I Blue”

Having subsequently moved to ABC Records, having become an international superstar and a millionaire several times over, and having kicked troublesome heroin, 1968 Ray would seem biographically to be quite a different person than 1959 Ray. He rarely repeated himself as far as his song selection went in his career, so his re-recording of “Am I Blue” gives a rare glimpse into how he approached a song in two different eras.

The most important difference in the 1968 version of this song is its orchestration – it’s considerably more stark and occupies a narrower range than the 1959 Atlantic version. (Arrangements on the A Portrait Of Ray LP were done by Sid Feller, Oliver Nelson, and René Hall, though credits for individual songs aren’t given.)

Otherwise, the song is in the same key and taken at much the same pace. Ray again delivers a touching and vulnerable vocal performance, delighting in losing himself in the warm womb of the strings but sounding more independent than before – the relative quiet of the orchestra and the lack of a choir make the separation between him and the rest of the music more pronounced.

On the song’s last line, he indulges in a surprising falsetto reading of it – almost a whisper, his voice jumps up over octaves to explore a delicacy not heretofore reached. It’s a remnant leftover from his previous album, Listen, on which he occasionally slipped into a new falsetto voice. It was yet another skill he had added to his repertoire, an emotional shade he could apply whenever he thought it might give a song just the right nuance.

“Am I Blue” and the Sun

In a strange coincidence, both versions of “Am I Blue” have a song about the sun as their preceding songs on their respective albums: “Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying” on the 1959 album, and “The Sun Died” on the 1968 LP.

Single releases

Over a year after Ray had left Atlantic Records for ABC, his former label released “Am I Blue” as a single; it featured a much older B-side which itself had been an A-side in 1954. The 1968 version was not released on a single.

Listen to “Am I Blue”

Get your own “Am I Blue” on 45, LP, CD or MP3 from Amazon. Or get the complete Atlantic recordings 7xCD box set.