“Anybody With The Blues”

“Anybody With The Blues” is a smooth and somewhat uneventful pop-country song on Ray Charles’ 1986 album From The Pages Of My Mind. It maintains a stately air of restraint throughout, giving an overall impression of professionalism rather than soul or excitement.

Dave Loggins, second cousin of Kenny and composer of such songs as “Augusta”, the Masters Golf Tournament’s official song, wrote “Anybody With The Blues” for Ray during the latter’s country music stint at Columbia Records in the 1980s. Having enjoyed the huge success of his duets album Friendship, which was 100% Nashville country, with songs like “Anybody With The Blues” Ray began to jettison the country flavor of that album in favor of a sort of basic, genre-less “studio band” feel.

Loggins’ lyrics concern themselves with various ways someone might feel down or lost, and warn against moping alone about it, suggesting instead talking to someone. The first situation, actually, could be worse: a man has two women and must choose one. Naturally, he elects to go drink alone in his room until he figures something out.

So you’ve got two women in your life
And you love them both
You can’t run or put up a fight
You’ve gotta decide to let one of them go
Find a bottle and a room

As he does in each chorus, Ray advises against the solution mentioned in that last line because, he explains, “whiskey and walls don’t talk” – a truism to which anybody with the blues would be able to testify, you see.

The second verse is about a guy who let a woman go and now realizes he loves her more than he thought, and would like to get her back. The third is about not having enough money despite all the hard work you’ve put in.

Ray overdubbed his own voice several times for the backing vocals during the choruses, but despite this interesting and welcome touch, “Anybody With The Blues” is chiefly notable for its lack of surprises. Every drum fill is exactly where you’d expect, and every blandly melodic guitar lick is one you’ve heard countless times before.

Charles sings “Anybody With The Blues” professionally, too; his voice dripped with a natural soul even when he wasn’t trying hard, and on this song he comes off pretty relaxed indeed. This is the sound of Ray and a band being pleasantly accomplished and familiar, rather than loose and passionate.

Product like this, enjoyable as it is, may partially account for the genre-hopping excitement of his next and final Columbia album, Just Between Us.

Listen to “Anybody With The Blues”

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