I will say that Ray definitely sounds old in the recordings and you could hear some places where 20 years ago Ray would have taken it up an octave, however it's STILL totally Ray and still a great performance. I'm also genearlly not a big duet fan, but these are amazing artists he's performing with and, of course, it's Ray also. The horns on some of these songs make me want to testify, too
I gotta say I'm also a huge James Taylor fan, so hearing JT and Ray do Sweet Potato Pie is pretty awesome -- and that's also one of the songs that has some badass horn parts in it. I love the Gladys Knight tune as well. In short, if you are a Ray Charles fan, I would say this is a must have ... I think it's really cool that he could still bring it that late in his career.
I saw Ray perform twice in the year before he died and I've got to say I was let down by some of the over-whammy-bar'd sounds* as well as the album prior to this one that they were selling at the concert. So when my wife brought this album home, I didn't have high hopes, but I put it on and just about every track delivered, I thought.
* I will, however, give huge props to A Song For You performed live -- it was absolutely perfect and really moving.
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