“Just For A Thrill”

One of the greatest, if not the greatest, performances of Ray Charles’ career was the achingly beautiful “Just For A Thrill”, first appearing on his 1959 LP The Genius Of Ray Charles. It was released as a single in 1960, a couple months after Ray had left Atlantic for ABC Records. It remains one of Ray’s most famous recordings, rightfully so. “Just For A Thrill” is sublime.

The song was written by female jazz singer Lil Hardin Armstrong and vaudevillian Don Raye, and Armstrong (who had been married to Louis Armstrong until 1931) first recorded it in 1936. Hardin’s version of “Just For A Thrill” is, despite its heartbroken lyrics, much more cheerful, if necessarily wistful, than Ray’s famous version. Hardin sings only for part of the recording, which is half intended as an instrumental showcase.

When Ray Charles chose it for the orchestral side of The Genius Of Ray Charles (Side 2; Side 1 was with a brass band) he slowed down the tempo and plumbed the song’s lyrics to mine the honest, naked emotion lurking within them. The tale may be one told a thousand times – bitterly, the singer admonishes his former lover for merely toying with him, and not falling in love as deeply as he had; amusingly, even the LP’s liner notes admit the album’s lyrics are sometimes “banal” – but the arrangement, plus Ray’s busy piano solo and his sighing, wounded vocals, raise “Just For A Thrill” to its place in the pantheon of recorded music.

“Just For A Thrill” was arranged by Ralph Burns, and is a model of apropos restraint and supportive gentleness. The strings don’t try to tell the story of the song’s emotions, they are there merely to give Ray the setting he needs to do so. Mr. C is on piano throughout, and although this LP is the first time he had recorded with an orchestra (his R&B fans must have been mildly shocked when they heard it) it sounds as if he’d been doing it for years. And in fact, he probably had been hearing it for years in his head.

It’s when Ray Charles begins singing that the song flowers fully. He loads such a complex mix of sentiments in the very first line, which is the song’s title, and sets the pace for the performance from the outset. A cappella, and with perfect, precise timing, he intones, “Just, for a thrilllll” before the band comes in, and like a Pablo Picasso work, you can detect what you want in his voice.

I hear bitterness at her capriciousness; indignation at her callousness; paranoia at the prospect of never finding happiness; anger at her thoughtlessness; dejected loneliness; and most of all, tying all these together, a sighing resignation. Ray uses a palette of these emotions, and others, applying them to the words he sings with masterful strokes, changing and melding them often, often in each word of a line. He manages to wrest a thrilling and complicated narrative out of the short set of lyrics just with his remarkable vocal shifts and genius timing. It’s not “you changed the sunshine to rain,” it’s “you changed, the SUNshine to rainnnnn”. Important details, each opening up his world to the listener.

Most striking of all, perhaps the single most important change he made to the 1936 original and that made this version legendary, is his sudden, dramatically high melody on the line “to me you’re still the only one”. Where Lil Hardin Armstrong sang this phrase laconically, like the rest of the song, Ray lets his voice break free on it, like his mix of emotions uncontrollably bursting out for a split second before he manages to get them under wraps again.

It’s not just his voice that gives “Just For A Thrill” its idiosyncratic dynamism, but Ray’s piano. Most important are the octave-hopping fills he plays on individual keys after certain lines of each verse, a demonstration of his playful and fearless virtuosity at the keyboard. His solo, too, is notable, as it violates the gentleness that otherwise informs the performance and arrangement. A jazzy flurry of notes spill from his fingers like a spigot; it’s an unusual solo, at times almost atonal, and emphasizes the angular discomfort and disarray in the life of the song’s protagonist.

When I purchased a single lot of over 50 Ray Charles records on eBay a couple years ago, which led to the establishment of ItsAllAboutRay.com, the very first song I played from this embarrassment of vinyl riches wasn’t “What’d I Say” or “I Can’t Stop Loving You” or any of his other classics. It was the first song on Side 2 of The Genius Of Ray Charles – “Just For A Thrill”. It’s truly one of the best, however you define “best”.

Single releases

Listen to “Just For A Thrill”

Get your own “Just For A Thrill” on 45, LP, CD or MP3 from Amazon. Or get the complete Atlantic recordings 7xCD box set.