Ray Charles - Hallelujah, I Love Her So | Soul Sunday

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This Soul Sunday highlights Ray Charles’s “Hallelujah I Love Her So,” a 1956 release that marked a pivotal moment in the birth of soul music. Blending gospel fervor with bluesy swing, the song showcased Charles’s groundbreaking fusion of sacred and secular sounds. Recorded at Atlantic Records with Charles on piano and vocals, the track is driven by a rollicking horn arrangement and a call-and-response style rooted in the church. “Hallelujah I Love Her So” became a top 5 R&B hit and laid the foundation for Charles’s revolutionary impact on American music. It remains a timeless testament to his genius and the joyful spirit at the heart of soul.

Ray Charles Robinson had it rough. Born in 1930, he was poor, Black in Jim Crow Florida, and blind. But his mother, Aretha Robinson, enrolled him at the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind. He learned to read music, mastering classical piano and other instruments. When Aretha died in 1945, Ray, 14, quit school to work as a piano man. In 1948, he and guitarist Gussie McKee relocated to Seattle, Washington. A club hired Ray, whose trio charted in 1949 with his take on “Confession Blues.” He moved to Los Angeles, California, to be music director for Lowell Fulson. Now “Ray Charles,” he also produced, delivering hits like Guitar Slim’s #1 “The Things That I Used To Do.” In 1952 he signed with Atlantic. He broke big with “I Got A Woman” and embraced jazz with LPs and shows at settings like Carnegie Hall, reaching the Top Ten with “What’d I Say” and diversifying into country, blues, and big band sounds. In 1959 he moved to ABC-Paramount, scoring such hits as “Georgia On My Mind,” a multi-Grammy winner he followed with “Hit the Road, Jack.” He broke ground with “I Can’t Stop Loving You” from the 1962 LP Modern Sounds in Country And Western Music. He was now touring internationally, an achievement punctuated by a stint in rehab. He returned to the charts with “Let’s Go Get Stoned” and “Crying Time.” Though his hitmaking fell off, his fans remained, held by recordings like his rendition of “America The Beautiful.” In 1977 he returned to Atlantic and hosted Saturday Night Live. In 1985 he helped record “We Are The World,” the charity single celebrated for its chorus of music heavyweights. His latter years were rich with friendships, awards, and family until his passing in 2004. —Michael Dolan

Ray Charles - Hallelujah, I Love Her So
Album: Ray Charles
Single released May 1956
Atlantic

_Written By:_ Ray Charles

_Performed By:_
Ray Charles, piano, vocal
Joe Bridgewater, trumpet
Panama Francis, drums
Don Wilkerson, tenor sax
Joshua Willis, trumpet
Cecil Payne, baritone sax
Paul West, bass


_Produced By:_

Jerry Wexler and Nesuhi Ertegun

Recorded at Atlantic Studios in New York, NY on November 30, 1955

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