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20 July 2010

Ray Charles In Concerto In Rome (1981)

The Ray Charles Group played a concert at the Teatro Tendastrisce in Rome, on September 7, 1981. There is an excellent television version*, presenting very nice footage, thanks to dynamic (filmed, not videotaped) documentary-style camera work. The film, titled Ray Charles In Concerto, includes some funny and informative pre-concert sequences, and you can see Ray entering and exiting the stage from - so to speak - his 'perspective', a camera following him step by step.
The concert footage was introduced by Gianni Minà, and followed by a 4-minute interview with Brother Ray, sitting in his dressing room - his voice dubbed over in Italian.
The program's director was Cesare Pierleoni. The film was aired by Rai.

Audio bootleg
There's also an audio bootleg  floating around on the Web (B quality, but still with better sound than the TV show's copy I saw), taken from the TV broadcast of the concert (by some sources this audio is incorrectly dated on 7 July '81).

Track list:
  1. Straight Ahead And Strive For Tone (Ray Charles Orchestra) - trombone solo by Dan Marcus**
  2. Intro
  3. Riding Thumb 
  4. Busted
  5. Georgia On My Mind 
  6. Then We'll Be Home (Sadies Tune)
  7. Some Enchanted Evening - sax solo by Rudy Johnson
  8. For Mamma
  9. Intro Raelettes
  10. Rock Steady (ft. Estella Yarbrough)
  11. I Can't Stop Loving You
  12. Crying Time (ft. Estella Yarbrough)
  13. I Can See Clearly Now
  14. Baby Please Don't Go - guitar solo by Tony Matthews
  15. What'd I Say
  16. Outro

* The video's title is Ray Charles In Concerto; I don't know if the TV-program had the same title. ** Partly with Italian voice over. In the TV version, this instrumental fills a sound bed under the pre-concert footage. Steve Sigmund helped me to identify the tune and the soloist.

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