Songs That Sound Alike? Ray Charles - "What'd I Say" & Lightnin Hopkins - The Foot Race Is On (Part I - Ray Charles' song)

Edited by Azizi Powell

This is Part II of a two part series that features two African American songs that I believe have very similar tunes: Ray Charles' Rhythm & Blues song "What'd I Say" ("What I Say") and Lightnin Hopkins' Blues song "The Foot Race Is On".

This post includes information about Ray Charles, information about the 1958 song "What'd I Say" and two video examples of Ray Charles and his band and his back up singers performing that song.

Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2016/05/songs-that-sound-alike-ray-charles.html for Part II of this series. Part II showcases Lightnin Hopkins'song and includes information about Lightnin Hopkins, and a sound file and lyrics of "The Foot Race Is On". In addition, that post includes some comments about some of the lyrics in that song.

If these two songs do indeed have the same tune or very similar tunes, given the firm documentation about the December 1958 date that Ray Charles composed his song "What'd I Say", given the fact that that song was an instant hit, and given the fact that Lightnin Hopkins didn't perform outside of Houston, Texas until 1959-1960s, it's almost certain that Lightnin Hopkins borrowed the tune for "The Foot Race Is On" from Ray Charles' hit song "What'd I Say" -that is, unless there is another song-or other compositions- that preceded both of these songs that has (have) the same tune.

I'd love to know if other folks think these songs sound very similar. I'd also like to know if there are other songs -before and after 1958- that have the same or similar tunes.

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The content of this post is presented for cultural, entertainment and aesthetic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to Ray Charles, his band, and his backup singers the Raelettes for their musical legacy. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publisher of this sound file on YouTube.

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INFORMATION ABOUT THE SONG "WHAT I'D SAY"
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27d_I_Say.
"What'd I Say" (or "What I Say") is an American Rhythm and blues song, by Ray Charles released in 1959. As single divided into two parts, it was one of the first soul songs. The composition was improvised one evening late in 1958 when Charles, his orchestra, and backup singers had played their entire set list at a show and still had time left; the response from many audiences was so enthusiastic that Charles announced to his producer that he was going to record it.

After his run of R&B hits, this song finally broke Charles into mainstream pop music and itself sparked a new subgenre of R&B titled soul, finally putting together all the elements that Charles had been creating since he recorded "I Got a Woman" in 1954. The gospel and rhumba influences combined with the sexual innuendo in the song made it not only widely popular but very controversial to both white and black audiences. It earned Ray Charles his first gold record and has been one of the most influential songs in R&B and rock and roll history. For the rest of his career, Charles closed every concert with the song. It was added to the National Recording Registry in 2002 and ranked at number 10 in Rolling Stone's "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".

Composition and recording
According to Charles' autobiography, "What'd I Say" was accidental when he improvised it to fill time at the end of a concert in December 1958.[5][6] He asserts that he never tested songs on audiences before recording them, but "What'd I Say" is an exception. Charles himself does not recall where the concert took place, but Mike Evans in Ray Charles: The Birth of Soul places the show in Brownsville, Pennsylvania....

tarting on the electric piano, Charles played what felt right: a series of riffs, switching then to a regular piano for four choruses backed up by a unique Latin conga tumbao rhythm on drums. The song changed when Charles began singing simple, improvised unconnected verses ("Hey Mama don't you treat me wrong / Come and love your daddy all night long / All right now / Hey hey / All right"). Charles used gospel elements in a twelve-bar blues structure.[9][10] Some of the first lines ("See the gal with the red dress on / She can do the Birdland all night long") are influenced by a boogie-woogie style that Ahmet Ertegun attributes to Clarence "Pinetop" Smith who used to call out to dancers on the dance floor instructing what to do through his lyrics.[4] In the middle of the song, however, Charles indicated that the Raelettes should repeat what he was doing, and the song transformed into a call and response between Charles, the Raelettes, and the horn section in the orchestra as they called out to each other in ecstatic shouts and moans and blasts from the horns.[9]

The audience reacted immediately; Charles could feel the room shaking and bouncing as the crowd was dancing. Many audience members approached Charles at the end of the show to ask where they could purchase the record. Charles and the orchestra performed it again several nights in a row with the same reaction at each show. He called Jerry Wexler to say he had something new to record, later writing, "I don't believe in giving myself advance notices, but I figured this song merited it"....

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LYRICS - WHAT'D I SAY
Uploaded on Sep 28, 2011
Hey mama, don't you treat me wrong
Come and love your daddy all night long
All right now, hey hey, all right

See the girl with the diamond ring
She knows how to shake that thing
All right now now now, hey hey, hey hey

Tell your mama, tell your pa
I'm gonna send you back to Arkansas
Oh yes, ma'm, you don't do right, don't do right

When you see me in misery
Come on baby, see about me
Now yeah, all right, all right, aw play it, boy

When you see me in misery
Come on baby, see about me
Now yeah, hey hey, all right

See the girl with the red dress on
She can do the Birdland all night long
Yeah yeah, what'd I say, all right

Well, tell me what'd I say, yeah
Tell me what'd I say right now
Tell me what'd I say
Tell me what'd I say right now
Tell me what'd I say
Tell me what'd I say yeah

And I wanna know
Baby I wanna know right now
And-a I wanna know
And I wanna know right now yeah
And-a I wanna know
Said I wanna know yeah

Spoken: Hey, don't quit now! (c'mon honey)
Naw, I got, I uh-uh-uh, I'm changing (stop! stop! we'll do it again)
Wait a minute, wait a minute, oh hold it! Hold it! Hold it!

Hey (hey) ho (ho) hey (hey) ho (ho) hey (hey) ho (ho) hey

Oh one more time (just one more time)
Say it one more time right now (just one more time)
Say it one more time now (just one more time)
Say it one more time yeah (just one more time)
Say it one more time (just one more time)
Say it one more time yeah (just one more time)

Hey (hey) ho (ho) hey (hey) ho (ho) hey (hey) ho (ho) hey

Ah! Make me feel so good (make me feel so good)
Make me feel so good now yeah (make me feel so good)
Woah! Baby (make me feel so good)
Make me feel so good yeah (make me feel so good)
Make me feel so good (make me feel so good)
Make me feel so good yeah (make me feel so good)

Huh (huh) ho (ho) huh (huh) ho (ho) huh (huh) ho (ho) huh

Awh it's all right (baby it's all right)
Said that it's all right right now (baby it's all right)
Said that it's all right (baby it's all right)
Said that it's all right yeah (baby it's all right)
Said that it's all right (baby it's all right)
Said that it's all right (baby it's all right)

Woah! Shake that thing now (baby shake that thing)
Baby shake that thing now now (baby shake that thing)
Baby shake that thing (baby shake that thing)
Baby shake that thing right now (baby shake that thing)
Baby shake that thing (baby shake that thing)
Baby shake that thing (baby shake that thing)

Woah! I feel all right now yeah (make me feel all right)
Said I feel all right now (make me feel all right)
Woooah! (make me feel all right)
Tell you I feel all right (make me feel all right)
Said I feel all right (make me feel all right)
Baby I feel all right (make me feel all right)

Source- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsJexJMPG30
Ray Charles-What'd i say/Lyrics [sound file], published by MrSenneboy, Sep 28, 2011
-snip-
Notice that in the performance shown as Example #2 below, after RayCharles sings "See the girl with the red dress on", he updates the song by singing "She can Philly Dog all night long."

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SHOWCASE EXAMPLES
Example #1: Ray Charles - What'd I Say LIVE



funkyfrog51, Uploaded on Apr 20, 2009

Ray Charles live in Sao Paulo, Brazil 1963.

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Example #2: Ray Charles - What'd I Say (Color)



John1948Ten, Uploaded on Aug 17, 2010
"Ray Charles was the musician most responsible for developing soul music. Singers like Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson also did a great deal to pioneer the form, but Charles did even more to devise a new form of black pop by merging '50s R&B with gospel-powered vocals, adding plenty of flavor from contemporary jazz, blues, and (in the '60s) country. Then there was his singing; his style was among the most emotional and easily identifiable of any 20th century performer, up there with the likes of Elvis and Billie Holiday. He was also a superb keyboard player, arranger, and bandleader. The brilliance of his 1950s and '60s work, however, can't obscure the fact that he made few classic tracks after the mid-'60s, though he recorded often and performed until the year before his death.

Blind since the age of six (from glaucoma), Charles studied composition and learned many instruments at the St. Augustine School for the Deaf and the Blind. His parents had died by his early teens, and he worked as a musician in Florida for a while before using his savings to move to Seattle in 1947. By the late '40s, he was recording in a smooth pop/R&B style derivative of Nat "King" Cole and Charles Brown. He got his first Top Ten R&B hit with "Baby, Let Me Hold Your Hand" in 1951. Charles' first recordings came in for their fair share of criticism, as they were much milder and less original than the classics that would follow, although they're actually fairly enjoyable, showing strong hints of the skills that were to flower in a few years.

In the early '50s, Charles' sound started to toughen as he toured with Lowell Fulson, went to New Orleans to work with Guitar Slim (playing piano on and arranging Slim's huge R&B hit, "The Things That I Used to Do"), and got a band together for R&B star Ruth Brown. It was at Atlantic Records that Ray Charles truly found his voice, consolidating the gains of recent years and then some with "I Got a Woman," a number-two R&B hit in 1955. This is the song most frequently singled out as his pivotal performance, on which Charles first truly let go with his unmistakable gospel-ish moan, backed by a tight, bouncy horn-driven arrangement.

Throughout the '50s, Charles ran off a series of R&B hits that, although they weren't called "soul" at the time, did a lot to pave the way for soul by presenting a form of R&B that was sophisticated without sacrificing any emotional grit. "This Little Girl of Mine," "Drown in My Own Tears," "Hallelujah I Love Her So," "Lonely Avenue," and "The Right Time" were all big hits. But Charles didn't really capture the pop audience until "What'd I Say," which caught the fervor of the church with its pleading vocals, as well as the spirit of rock & roll with its classic electric piano line. It was his first Top Ten pop hit, and one of his final Atlantic singles, as he left the label at the end of the '50s for ABC.

One of the chief attractions of the ABC deal for Charles was a much greater degree of artistic control of his recordings. He put it to good use on early-'60s hits like "Unchain My Heart" and "Hit the Road Jack," which solidified his pop stardom with only a modicum of polish attached to the R&B he had perfected at Atlantic. In 1962, he surprised the pop world by turning his attention to country & western music, topping the charts with the "I Can't Stop Loving You" single, and making a hugely popular album (in an era in which R&B/soul LPs rarely scored high on the charts) with Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. Perhaps it shouldn't have been so surprising; Charles had always been eclectic, recording quite a bit of straight jazz at Atlantic, with noted jazz musicians like David "Fathead" Newman and Milt Jackson.

Charles remained extremely popular through the mid-'60s, scoring big hits like "Busted," "You Are My Sunshine," "Take These Chains From My Heart," and "Crying Time," although his momentum was slowed by a 1965 bust for heroin. This led to a year-long absence from performing, but he picked up where he left off with "Let's Go Get Stoned" in 1966. Yet by this time Charles was focusing increasingly less on rock and soul, in favor of pop tunes. One approaches sweeping criticism of Charles with hesitation; he was an American institution, after all, and his vocal powers barely diminished over his half-century career. The fact remains, though, that his work after the late '60s on record was very disappointing." ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide"

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This concludes Part I of this series.

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