“Don’t You Love Me Anymore?”

Ray Charles’s 1980 recording of “Don’t You Love Me Anymore?” came out before Englebert Humperdinck’s better-known version from 1981, but !man! is Ray’s a thousand times better. Orchestral without being syrupy, dramatic without descending into inauthenticity, and glacial without being sedate. And as is so often the case, it’s Ray’s touching “live human being” vocals that accomplish almost all of this.

“Don’t You Love Me Anymore?” was written by Bruce Roberts and Carol Bayer Sager, and this recording was arranged by Nan Schwartz. It’s her only arranger credit on Ray’s excellent Brother Ray Is At It Again LP. This track was not released on a single.

Incidentally, maybe it isn’t fair to compare Brother Ray’s versions of tunes to those of other artists – he always was a genre unto himself – but the head-to-head matchup is hard to resist in the case of Brother Engelbert. The latter’s inferior “Don’t You Love Me Anymore?” is product built of, in a phrase, inoffensive reliability: competent and humorless musicianship, an ultra-familiar beat, and vocals that hit every intended mark. You’ve heard it a thousand times before and you can recognize everything coming down the pike even before it arrives. Upon hearing it you don’t ever need to hear it again. Well done – really. (Yaaawn.)

On the other hand, Ray Charles’ “Don’t You Love Me Anymore?” is full of ghosts and empty spaces, dead leaves and idle hands and a bottle of cognac. There is life in his voice and its perfectly-timed cracks and muttered asides. The gentle music and the vocal anguish don’t clash but rather push the parameters outward. It’s a riveting thing: heavenly and deep, difficult but endlessly enjoyable.

Listen to “Don’t You Love Me Anymore?”

Get your own “Don’t You Love Me Anymore?” on LP or MP3 from Amazon.