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The Birth of Soul: The Complete Atlantic Rhythm and Blues Recordings is a 3-CD box set compilation by Ray Charles, released in 1991.

The Birth of Soul
Box set by Ray Charles
Released	October 1, 1991 (1991-10-01)
Recorded	1952–1959
Genre	Rhythm and blues[1]
Length	148:48
Label	Atlantic
Producer	Herb Abramson, Ahmet Ertegün, and Jerry Wexler
Ray Charles chronology
Rhythm & Blues: Ray Charles – 1954–1966 (1991) The Birth of Soul (1991) His Greatest Hits (1992)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[2]
Down Beat	[3]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[4]

Critical reception

In a contemporary review, Peter Watrous of The New York Times said that the box set "tracks the progress of a figure who profoundly changed what was possible in American music."[5] He ranked it as the twelfth best album of 1991.[6] The Birth of Soul was voted the third best reissue of the year in The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll for 1991.[7]

In 2003, the album was ranked number 54 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time,[8] maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list,[9] then dropping to number 210 in a 2020 reboot of the list.[10] In a retrospective article for the magazine, Robert Christgau wrote that, despite "caveats" such as material repeated on more "economic" releases, The Birth of Soul is "the rockingest Charles long-form you can buy" and remarked on the legacy of its recordings:

Although Charles' fabled blues-gospel synthesis is on display from 'I Got a Woman' to 'I Believe to My Soul,' 'birth of soul' gets the emphasis wrong. Seldom conventionally catchy, this Robert Palmer-annotated collection epitomizes a world-historic catchall of a genre that Charles could only describe as 'genuine down-to-earth Negro music' — namely, rhythm & blues. Crack bands, first Atlantic's and then his own, underpin his rich, gravelly vocals with hard-hitting grooves of deceptive rhythmic and harmonic complexity. Halfway in, a female backup group soon to be known as the Raelettes starts shoring up his male voice and egging it on, an innovation that became a cliche so fast people think it was always there.[1]

Christgau recommended Rhino Entertainment's 1994 compilation album The Best of Ray Charles: The Atlantic Years as a cheaper alternative to the box set.[1]

Track listing

References

External links

• Archived RayCharles.com album page at the Wayback Machine (archived February 3, 2009)

На других языках

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- [en] The Birth of Soul

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[ru] The Birth of Soul

The Birth of Soul (с англ. — «Рождение души») — трех-дисковый бокс-сет ритм-энд-блюзового музыканта Рэя Чарльза, изданный 1 октября 1991 года. В 2003 году журнал Rolling Stone включил альбом в список 500 величайших альбомов всех времён по версии журнала Rolling Stone, альбом находится на 53-й позиции.

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