Welcome back!

I hope you all enjoyed the joint mix from both myself and Hoppin’ John’ from earlier in the week? I thought I’d roll by here to hit you up with a new offering for the weekend before heading over to East London later to join Jamie Coughlan for his ongoing 60’s and 70’s Funk and Soul night, Bump & Hustle which returns tonight. There has been a lot of interest in tonight and it’s already looking like it will be another good one at The Elbow Room in Shoreditch, so head down and join us if you’re in the area.

Of late I seem to be investing a lot of my (limited) spare time scouring the crates of various record dealers along the South Coast and today’s 45 is taken from a somewhat successful trip from a few weeks back. My recent listening habits have seen me dipping in and out of the seemingly endless back catalogue of the hugely talented Ray Charles, so when I stumbled upon today’s 45 by The Raelettes, his backing singers, in amongst several dusty cases of 7” singles it went straight into the ‘please take me home’ pile!

Shortly after signing a record deal with Art Ertegün’s legendary Atlantic Records, Ray Charles went onto enlist the services of an all female group, The Cookies as his backing singers. After jinking the line up about a little, he took Darlene McCrea and Margie Hendricks from The Cookies, and added Patricia Lyles and Gwendolyn Berry to form the original line up of The Raelettes.

Over the years The Raelettes would become synonymous with The Ray Charles ‘sound’. Many of his hits such as ‘What’d I Say’, ‘Hit The Road Jack’ and ‘Right Time’ wouldn’t have had the strength and power and perhaps even not achieved their respective huge sucsesses had The Raelettes not been holding up the back end of the cuts.

Which brings us on to todays 45. ‘All I Need Is His Love’ was released in 1968 on the Tangerine Record label that Ray Charles had founded 3 years earlier. Although the 45 was billed as being by The Raelettes, it was co-written by both Ray Charles and Jimmy Holiday. Whether Ray Charles actually played on the 45 himself or not is unclear, but definitely not unlikely.

‘All I Need Is His Love’ is actually the B-side to ‘I’m Gett’ N Long Alright’. The single did fairly well, reaching #23 in the charts at the time. The 45 features punchy horns and is a fantastic upbeat R&B stomper which really showcases The Raelettes huge talents. The vocals on this, as well as many of their other singles, has an almost Gospel feel which definately defines the track and sets it apart from the many others artists and groups from the same mold.

The Raelettes went on to record and perform right upto Ray Charles death in 2004, albeit with several different line ups that featured various combinations of at least 12 different members!

I’m sure you’ll agree, as well as assisting to define the musical career of Ray Charles, The Raelettes own output was certainly worthy of mention in its own right.

Enjoy today’s 45 and hopefully we’ll see some of you tonight at The Elbow Room for Bump & Hustle. I’ll be back after the weekend with some more ‘Good Stuff’ for you so sit tight and don’t go too far!