Old-Time Rock ‘n’ Roll:
How The 1980s Embraced 1950s and 1960s Oldies Music
Ray
Photo: "File:Nachtconcert van Ray Charles in RAI-gebouw Ray Charles, Bestanddeelnr 915-1481.jpg" by Hugo van Gelderen / Anefo is licensed under CC0 1.0
Rhythm and blues maestro Ray Charles hit it big with Georgia on My Mind,
Hit the Road Jack,
and What I’d Say.
He also had success with his Country and Western Meets Rhythm and Blues album. Like many of his contemporaries, he struggled reaching the charts by the end of the 1970s. As with Aretha Franklin and James Brown, Ray Charles has a memorable part in The Blues Brothers. In the movie, Charles plays a tough-negotiating music store owner who proves a keyboard’s value by playing Shake A Tail Feather.
Ray Charles turned to country music to salvage his recording career. It took the first half of the decade to reach the top of the country charts, but he did it with his 1984 album Friendship. Several country legends, such as Mickey Gilley, George Jones, and Willie Nelson sing with Ray. Seven Spanish Angels,
his duet with Willie Nelson, hit number one on the country charts.
Ray Charles also hit it big on an unlikely platform: the Republican Party. Once viewed by black Americans as the only party to support, the Republican Party, by the 1980s, was deemed unfriendly to non-whites. To counter that assumption and to tout themselves as the nation’s patriotic party, Republicans paid Ray Charles to sing America the Beautiful
at their 1984 Convention. Some people called him a sellout but a majority of Americans praised him. He cashed in on his comeback by singing duets with popular 1980s singers like Billy Joel, touring constantly, and making appearances with ballet companies and symphony orchestras to broaden his base. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted him as one of the first members in 1986 The movie Plains, Trains, and Automobiles played Mess Around
in what begins as a comedy of Del Griffith driving errors. By the end of the decade, Ray Charles remained in the limelight due to his Diet Pepsi commercials.