Ray Charles turns finale into a party

B.B. King wistfully recalls one of the last conversations he had with Ray Charles, when the two were recording a gutsy Lowell Fulson blues number last year for what turns out to be the final studio work from the man known as “the Genius of Soul.”

“He wasn’t feeling well, and I could tell, because I’ve been around him enough to know,” says King, 78, one of a dozen peers and admirers who appear on “Genius Loves Company,” the album Charles finished shortly before he died at 73 in June. It will be released today.

“I remember him saying to me, ‘You know, B., if we had known we’d live this long, we’d have took better care of ourselves,’ ” King says with a slight chuckle. “We talked a little bit more musicians’ talk, but that was about the last real words we had to say.”

Along with King, Norah Jones, Elton John, Van Morrison and Willie Nelson are among the guests who worked with one of the most innovative and influential artists ever in pop music on the album.

The idea for a duets CD was hatched well before the singer had to cancel a tour last fall to undergo hip replacement surgery. While recuperating, he developed other health problems that led to his death, attributed to complications from liver disease.

The album aims to provide the first half of a 1-2 punch to significantly raise Charles’ public profile over the next few months. Another big boost figures to come from “Ray,” the feature film on the life of the Georgia-born singer widely credited with pioneering the fusion of gospel, R&B;, blues and pop into what became known as soul music.

The movie, due Oct. 29 and starring Jamie Foxx, traces Charles’ life from the onset of blindness when he was a child through the beginning of his recording career in the 1940s, his decades-long use of heroin and eventual triumph over addiction and his rise to pop icon status. Early reports on Foxx’s performance suggest it may net him an Oscar nomination.

“In recent years, I wouldn’t say he’d been forgotten, but he hadn’t been celebrated recently,” says John Burk, producer of seven of the album’s 12 tracks and executive vice president of Concord Records, which is releasing the CD in conjunction with Starbucks and Hear Music. “Clearly he’s one of the major influences on American popular music.”

Burk and co-producer Phil Ramone said they didn’t want to simply line up high-profile names for their marquee value. They wanted to pair Charles with a wide range of musicians who either had been close to him over the years, as in the cases of Nelson and King, or who acknowledged him as a significant influence on their own music, such as Morrison and Jones.

“We got them in the same room together and they worked one-on-one together,” Burk says of the sessions at Charles’ studio in Los Angeles. “There’s a certain magic you get that way, and that was an important part of it too.”

The results of “Genius Loves Company” parallel Charles’ boundary-bending career, from the countrified ache of “Here We Go Again” with Jones to the pop balladry of John’s “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word” to the bluesy inflections of his duet with King on Fulson’s “Sinner’s Prayer.”

The first track was recorded last June, before the duets album idea crystallized, for a TV special on the Songwriters Hall of Fame awards, where one honoree was Morrison. Ramone, who oversaw the album’s other five sessions, said the Irish singer-songwriter insisted that the only way he’d appear on the show was if he could meet and sing with Charles.

They chose Morrison’s “Crazy Love,” and during the rehearsal, Ramone says, “we were in the hotel ballroom, getting the cameras ready and Ray was sitting at the piano talking with me. He pulled out the Braille music and started to play it. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Van walking into the room and his face got all flushed, just like a little boy. It was wonderful to watch that expression.”

Burk said Elton John echoed the sentiments of most of the participants when he described working with Charles as like playing tennis with a tennis pro -- “it raises everybody’s game.”

Although the hip surgery last fall derailed Charles’ virtual nonstop touring, it helped the project along, Burk said: “From that point forward, this record became virtually his entire focus, and to have him focused on it was wonderful, and the scheduling was a lot easier.”

Did Charles ever give an indication that he knew this might be his swan song?

“He was not the kind of guy who would ever tell you that,” Burk says. “But it does seem ... looking back, that he was choosing material with which he could make a statement.”

The final song Charles worked on for the album was his duet with John, which was recorded about three months before he died.

“It was an incredibly emotionally charged day,” Burk says. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the control booth.

“Another one is the song he did with Willie [Nelson], their rendition of ‘It Was a Very Good Year,’ with these two elder statesmen looking back on life. There were a lot of really touching moments like that.”