Consumer Guide Album

Ray Charles: Love and Peace [Atlantic, 1978]
What a letdown. With covers that range from silly (is that Jack "Riding Thumb," after he hits the road?) to obvious ("We Had It All" is quintessentially Charles country adequately rendered), and with a filler from his publishing subsidiary at a redundant nadir, the same old horn charts and obligatory big productions really begin to grate. Ray doesn't hit his stride until the last five words--one word, really--of the final cut, which is about poor people and addressed to the president: "Can you dig it? Amen." B-