RAY CHARLIES- THE COMPLETE ATLANTIC SIDES

I just had the great pleasure over the last couble of days of listening to the box set, RAY CHARLIES- PURE GENIUS- THE COMPLETE ATLANTIC RECORDINGS(1952-1959). This box set is creatively packed as a 50's record player and contains a terrific well written hard cover book written by the people who were there when Ray was becoming the "genius" we ended up loving for his life and music. If you are true lover of soul/rhythm and blues/blues/jazz, Ray himself said he did not play rock and roll, you are going to be in "music heaven" when listening to this great music. There are six cds and a bonus dvd of Ray at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960. Many people do not realize that Ray was a great jazz player in his own right, this set includes all the sides he cut with the great Milt "Bags" Jackson along with David "Fathead" Newman among many other outstanding jazz players. So, when Ray stopped trying to sound like Nat King Cole and Charlies Brown, as he said, I was not trying to be creative, but did not want to starve and just pay the bills, and before he got into country music and generic pop music, he developed his own "voice" during this period and left us with some of the greatest "soul" music of the last century.