“I Won’t Leave”
Song by Ray Charles
Side 2 of Ray Charles’ 1968 LP A Portrait Of Ray starts with quite a bang: “I Won’t Leave” is one of the greatest and most exciting rapid-fire 1960s-soul-style songs Ray ever recorded.
“I Won’t Leave”, written for Ray’s Tangerine Records by Luther Ingram, Robert Bateman and Lou Courtney, is led by a guitar, unusually for Ray generally but something he often did in this era. When the tight, muscular horn section isn’t blustering out its jittery communiques, the guitar flashes some funky, on-the-beat seventh chords, and best of all bridges the one-line chorus – when Ray cackles, “I won’ leave ’til I get what I come for, girl” – back to the main groove with a simple and repetitive two-note riff that last an entire eight bars.
The simplicity and trebly elusiveness of that riff can be said to represent the true heart of “I Won’t Leave”: this is party music, lean and unstoppable and impossible not to get up and dance to. No dark night of the soul or sappy, choir-backed descent into a pillowy loneliness, this one. This dark night is in a disco, and the only pillow is the one she won’t be sharing if she “abuses” or “misuses” him.
The subject matter of “I Won’t Leave” is pretty standard fare for Mr. C: treat him right if you know what’s good for you. He makes it sound not so much threatening but like an ultimatum. Anyway, the message isn’t important here, it’s the impeccable growl in his voice, the beleaguered but energized tone that comes from deep within. More than anything, it’s the rhythmic timing of Ray’s singing that is its most important aspect, underscoring the fact that “I Won’t Leave” is all about the beat.
Dating the song definitively to 1968 is a guitar solo that clatters and rattles as satisfyingly as any of the era (“Sounds good,” cries Ray encouragingly, “way down home!”); stamping it as a Ray Charles song specifically is the wonderful saxophone solo that comes midway through. Ray would explore funky R&B like this further on the 1969 album Doing His Thing and on several singles, and with a performance that coalesces as well as “I Won’t Leave” it was certainly an avenue worth continuing down.
Listen to “I Won’t Leave”
Songs on A Portrait Of Ray