It was 63 years ago today (February 18th, 1959) that the late Ray Charles recorded his classic song “What’d I Say.” The song originally started out as a jam to kill time at a dance, after Charles realized that he and the band had run through their entire repertoire and still had an additional 12 minutes to kill. Charles broke into the song’s legendary five-note opening riff and instructed his background vocalists, the Raelettes, to simply repeat everything he sang.
The inspiration for the song’s call-and-response section came from the church music Charles grew up with in Greensville, Florida. He remembered that when the preacher sang something, the congregation shouted it back, as if on cue. He incorporated that style of gospel singing into the song, in addition to what he called “the sweet sounds of love.”
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