“Yours”
Song by Ray Charles
If the first song on an album is to set the tone for all that follows, then “Yours” from Ray Charles’ 1969 LP I’m All Yours Baby does its job impeccably: dense, romantic, and slow to the point of sedative, “Yours” announces that this is an evening in – and the listener is transported to the middle of a sumptuous night of seduction and soft lighting already in progress.
“Yours” is one of the oldest songs that Ray Charles ever recorded; it was written as early as 1915 by Cubans Gonzalo Roig and Augustin Rodriguez, with lyrics in Spanish, in which guise it was first recorded, by Italian singer Tito Schipa in 1922. When Jack Sherr and Albert Gamse gave it English lyrics in 1931, it became both an English and a Latin standard. It’s been covered by a wide range of artists, from Dick Dale to Gene Autry to Dinah Shore.
Ray’s version of “Yours”, arranged by Sid Feller, begins with the genial profundo hum of cellos before the delicate sounds of the rest of the orchestra ooze in. Ray had often recorded and released gorgeously-illustrated standards like this, especially since moving to ABC Records in 1960, but he always managed to put his own famously soulful spirit into each performance.
There is less of Ray on “Yours” than usual, however. It’s obviously his voice, but he’s playing everything absolutely straight this time. The tempo is so slow that it feels like he is struggling to restrain himself, somehow, as if he was determined to record the song exactly as he had heard it before when done by others and not go off on his usual tangents.
And so, for once, there are no Ray Charles-esque vocal asides or idiosyncratic changes to the source material. No mustering of passion for a gritty line or two to give relief to the song; this is all-smooth Ray, the likes of which had rarely been heard.
The entire I’m All Yours Baby album follows the pattern established by “Yours”, and with the front cover photo of Ray lounging (and grinning) with a woman on a sofa, it becomes clear that the album follows the Genius’ frequent modus operandi of being tied together by a concept: this time, sweet romance.
Ray takes “Yours” so slowly that he only has time for three verses, jettisoning one and repeating the first to end the song. It is here that he does manage to alter the lyrics from, say, Bing Crosby’s version ever so slightly, changing “just yours” to “I’m all yours”. So now we have the album title; “Yours”, basically, is the record’s title song.
“Yours” gives the listener an idea of what he or she may expect from the rest of the album, and although this sort of music was not exactly au courant in 1969, I suspect that bachelors both swinging and aspiring who got their hands on this LP found it a useful thing indeed to put on the turntable. On “Yours”, one is drawn immediately into Ray’s alluring universe of passion, one that shuts out the rest of the world and sees that every detail is carefully designed to point towards one conclusion and one conclusion only.
Can I get you some more wine, my dear?
Listen to “Yours”
Songs on I'm All Yours Baby!