“Indian Love Call”
Song by Ray Charles
As a piece of background music for an evening spent making out on the couch, Ray Charles’ “Indian Love Call” is perfect. And that’s just what this glacially-paced, swimmingly romantic song is supposed to be.
Released on the February 1969 album I’m All Yours Baby!, “Indian Love Call” is, like the LP’s nine other songs, intended as a little something to set the mood – a key ingredient for a night of romance and passion.
The 1924 song originally featured in the Broadway musical Rose-Marie, which may not be a household name today but was hugely popular in the 1920s, later being made as a film on several different occasions.
Ray Charles devoted a whole paragraph to “Indian Love Call” in his 1977 biography Brother Ray, part of a proudly defensive discourse on his controversial song choices over the years:
I’ve sung everything from “My Bonnie” to “Two Ton Tessie” to “Moon Over Miami” to “Indian Love Call”. I ain’t real narrow in my tastes. In fact, I’m crazy about “Indian Love Call”. I heard Jeanette MacDonald do it with Nelson Eddy when I was a kid, and I thought it was beautiful. I dug her kind of singing; she had real control and true feeling. I recorded the song in the late sixties and then sang it as a duet with Susaye Greene, one of the Raeletts, all over Europe and Japan. People flipped.
I’m glad Ray could make out the control and feeling of that 1936 version of “Indian Love Call”; I looked it up on YouTube and found the singing so high and operatic that I couldn’t make out what she was saying. Schmaltzy, like Ray’s, but without the smooth warmth. Jeanette’s version may be pretty but Ray is seducing you with his – and actively pursuing results is always better than merely posing and hoping for the best!
And that’s why I’ll take the Ray Charles version of “Indian Love Call” over any other – it’s sluggish, and threatens to drown in its own Sid Feller-arranged strings, but it’s supposed to. And ol’ Ray’s earnest voice sounds so good it perfectly hits the mark. His extensive personal experience in matters of passion helps inform the performance quite nicely.
Teenagers and adults alike can always turn to songs like “Indian Love Call” when they need to make the mood… just right. They don’t make ’em like this anymore. But the world could use it.
Listen to “Indian Love Call”
Songs on I'm All Yours Baby!