Ray Charles sings "You Are My Sunshine"
I am mildly obsessed with this recording, both as a work of art and as a music teaching resource.
While I have mentioned this track several times on here, I haven't really dug into the details. So it's time to change that. There's a lot to talk about: the genre, the chords, the melody, the rhythm. Let's take them in order.
The genre
"You Are My Sunshine" is the opening track on Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music Volume 2. It doesn't sound much like country or western music to me, but that's the point; Ray is remaking those tunes in his own R&B/jazz/blues idiom. The idea is not as surprising as it may seem if you know your American pop history. The distinction between "country" and "blues" was mostly a creation of the record industry, and they were thinking more about their audience's race than about musicology. Black and white rural American music from the early 20th century sounded very similar, and Ray simply pointed up the shared roots of country and R&B. The excellent 500 Songs podcast tells this story with great clarity; see in particular episodes 32 and 78.
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