It’s December 1958 and Ray Charles is playing a club in Brownsville Pennsylvania. He’s finished his set but still has 12 minutes to fill. He would have to improvise and he told his backup singers, The Raelettes, just follow and fill in where it seem natural.He leaned into his piano and started playing a riff that was part blues and part boogie-woogie. Soon enough, he started a call and response with the band and his singers the small crowd went wild.
The next year, he took the improvisation into the Atlantic Records recording studio and cut a track that became his first number one single and became his signature song.
At seven minutes, Atlantic knew radio stations wouldn’t play it – three minutes was the maximum length in those days – so they regaled it as a two, part single. You had to flip the 45 to hear the whole song.
In an interview, Tom Petty was asked if he ever got tired playing “American Girl.” He sighed and acknowledged that after all the years of course he got bored playing that same old song. But he went on to explain, “If I go to see Ray Charles he better play “What’d I Say,” I don’t care how many times he played it before.
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