“The Genius After Hours”

The title song of Atlantic’s 1961 Ray Charles outtakes album The Genius After Hours is a delicate bluesy instrumental piano workout. It features a simple trio – Ray on the keys of course, plus Roosevelt Sheffield on bass and William Peeples on drums. “The Genius After Hours” (a title that almost certainly came about around the time the LP was compiled and presumably without Ray’s input) follows the classic I-IV-V pattern. But, while structurally unremarkable, it’s one of the finest showcases of Ray Charles playing straight-up blues piano, wholly unadorned with either singing or brass. It’s just stark naked emotion.

Listening to “The Genius After Hours”, one is reminded of the magic of Ray Charles’s gifts. You can imagine him sitting at the piano and, rather than concentrating on technical musical matters, just allowing himself to feel. Feel the blues in his soul; let his fingers busy themselves with expressing those feelings. The heart, brain and body are all merged together in an effortless but real emotional outpouring – that’s why the words most often associated with Ray Charles are “genius” and “soul”.

The lengthy essay on the LP’s rear cover has this to say about “The Genius After Hours”:

“The Genius After Hours”, the opening track, is a slow blues illuminated by the self-searching, gently rhythmic quality for which the cliché adjective ‘funky’ is inadequate.
– Leonard Feather

Not sure if we’d call it funky, exactly, but to “self-searching” we would add “emotive” as well. As Ray’s piano alternately sways in sadness and erupts in despair the listener is sucked up in the vortex as well. You know what he’s feeling because you feel it too. For unadulterated Ray Charles blues piano, one can do no better than the five minutes of awesomeness that is “The Genius After Hours”. Try listening to this song after a hard day’s work. You’ll be transported and your stress will melt away.

Incidentally, Sheffield and Peeples appear on five of the album’s eight songs, though only this song and “Charlesville” are done as a trio. The others feature additional members including David “Fathead” Newman. “The Genius After Hours” is credited as having been written by Ray Charles himself.

Minutiae for Ray Charles nerds

“The Genius After Hours” is the first track on Side A of the LP but is listed last, at the bottom, of the front cover. There, the album’s eight songs are listed by increasing title length down the left side, making this the longest song title on the album.

Listen to “The Genius After Hours”

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