The artist Billy Joel always wanted to sing like | CPT PPP Coverage
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The artist Billy Joel always wanted to sing like appeared on faroutmagazine.co.uk by Far Out Magazine.
(Credits: Far Out / Billy Joel)
Billy Joel has never claimed to be the best singer in the world. As opposed to most rock frontmen who try to go on insane vocal runs or make it most of the way there through sheer bravado, Joel is content to simply sing his songs to anyone who will hear them, usually just relying on his insane gift for melody to carry him forward. He does have an awareness of delivery, and the soulfulness of Ray Charles was what got him hooked as a singer in the first place.
That is, until Joel actually decided to go solo. For the first few years of his career, the ‘Piano Man’ was convinced that he would end up being a background pianist for the rest of his life since he had no star power to speak of. Once he tried to shake off the stench of his proto-metal band Attila, though, a lot of his first songs ended up having a lot more soul to them than anything else.
Despite being known for having a rock and roll attitude, no one’s going to find too many rock songs on an album like Cold Spring Harbor. There are definitely great pop tracks, but an album so dominated by ballads almost puts it closer to R&B in some spots than anything that The Rolling Stones would have approved of.
Then again, Ray Charles didn’t have to worry about sounding rock and roll to have a foot in both worlds. Throughout his time as a pioneer of soul music, there were always songs in his back catalogue that could rock, like the boogie piano of ‘What’d I Say’, which The Beatles were known for covering in their pre-Fab days. It also takes a special brand of talent to be able to cross over to country music from R&B, with Modern Sounds in Country and Western, giving fans one of the most gorgeous performances of all time in ‘Georgia On My Mind’.
The piano skills were one thing, but Joel was more focused on how Charles was singing, recalling in his biography, “From the moment that I heard him, I wanted to sing like him. There’s something going on inside the larynx with Ray that creates the sound you’d get out of a speaker if you hooked up a Leslie Tone cabinet to a Hammond organ: he’s got a slow swirl that sounds growly but always so musical.”
While Joel normally couldn’t pull off being anything but earnest whenever he sang, you can definitely tell when he’s trying to put some of that swagger into his voice. When he eventually duetted with Charles on the song ‘My Baby Grand’, there almost seemed to be a healthy competition between Joel and his idol to see who could outdo each other in terms of soulfulness.
If you’re looking at anything that Ray Charles has sung on, anyone’s going to be competing for second place in that department. Most people have to do a fair bit of living before they can come close to sounding that soulful, but until the day he died, Charles had more grit and experience in his vocals than most soul singers get in their entire career.
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