The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [34]
How long did you stay with Swing Time?
I was there until Atlantic bought the contract. I think it was ’51 or so. About three or four years.
That was Ahmet [Ertegun] and Herb Abramson, I think, at that time. I don’t know how that was done. I met with the people at Atlantic, and they said, “Well, we’d like to record you,” so I said, “Well, I’m under contract to somebody.” They said, “Well, look, we’ll buy the contract.” So I said, “Fine, buy it.” And that’s it. Finished.
Why did you leave Atlantic? Jerry Wexler told me it was a “shock” to him.
Well, you know the people at Atlantic—Jerry, Ahmet, Nesuhi . . . I love all the people over there. It was the kind of thing where ABC came up with a contract. I think they were trying to lure somebody there, and I hate to say this, because it makes me sound like I’m blowin’ my own horn, but you know, I was with Atlantic and we had this big hit, “What’d I Say,” and a couple other things, so they came up with a contract and I let Jerry and them know about it. The contract was so unreal. I mean, the thing was that, well, if ABC was really seriously going to do it, Atlantic just couldn’t match it, based on the original contract I had with them. But I let them know, because, you know that Jerry and I are the best of friends because I didn’t do anything sneaky, in the dark, or nothin’ like that. They knew the whole bit, and my thing was, look, I’m not asking you to better ABC’s deal, I’m just saying if you can match it, I’ll stay with you. And it was the kind of thing where they said, “Look, Ray, it’s awfully heavy for us.”
You gotta understand, ABC at the time was offering me the kind of a contract that, believe me, in those days, in 1959, was unheard of. I don’t even think that they figured that I would do as well. What they were after was the name and to stimulate other names.
To sign with ABC.
Right. And so I was like a pawn, but as it turned out we were so lucky, because right after I went with ABC, we came up with “Georgia,” and then the country-western stuff, see? But I did a country-western song with Atlantic before I went to ABC, but the other side of it sold, the song “I Believe to My Soul.” Well, on the back of that was a song called “I’m Movin’ On.”
Hank Snow.
That’s right. There’s where I first get the idea. But it just turned out that once I changed contracts, I followed that idea. Now, with ABC we had people saying, “Hey, man, gee whiz, Ray, you got all these fans, you can’t do no country-western things. Your fans—you gonna lose all your fans.” Well, I said, “For Christ’s sake, I’ll do it anyway.” I didn’t want to be a country-western singer. I just wanted to take country-western songs. When I sing “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” I’m not singin’ it country-western. I’m singin’ it like me. But I think the words to country songs are very earthy like the blues, see, very down. They’re not as dressed up, and the people are very honest and say, “Look, I miss you, darlin’, so I went out and I got drunk in this bar.” That’s the way you say it. Wherein Tin Pan Alley will say, “Oh, I missed you, darling, so I went to this restaurant and I sat down and I had dinner for one.” That’s cleaned up now, you see? But country songs and the blues is like it is.
I did two albums of country-western, you gotta remember I did volume one, and hell, if you get an album to sell well over a million, you almost gotta do—that’s almost forcing you to do one more. But that’s all I did with country-western was two albums.
Atlantic gave you musical independence and built a reputation for R&B and jazz. ABC, on the other hand, wasn’t known for a sound. Did you have a feeling of trepidation about moving from one to the other?
No, ’cause my thing was that it was a record company, and I thought I could sell records for ABC as well as