The Genius of Ray Charles is a 1959 Ray Charles album, released in October by Atlantic Records, the seventh album since the debut Ray Charles in 1957. The album consists of swinging pop with big band arrangements. It comprises a first half of big band songs and a second half of string-backed ballads. The Genius of Ray Charles sold fewer than 500,000 copies and charted at number 17 on the Billboard 200. "Let the Good Times Roll" and "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Cryin'" were released as singles in 1959. Composition The album showcased Charles' breakout from rhythm and blues and onto a broader musical stage. Atlantic Records gave him full support in production and arrangements. As originally presented, the A side of the album featured the Ray Charles band with David "Fathead" Newman supplemented by players from the Count Basie and Duke Ellington bands, and arrangements by Quincy Jones. The B side of the original album consists of six ballads with arrangements by Ralph Burns and a large string orchestra. Charles's performance of "Come Rain or Come Shine", a song identified with Frank Sinatra, brought public attention to his voice alone without the "distractions" of his soulful piano and his snappy band. Each side contains a tribute to Louis Jordan with two songs he had hits with "Let the Good Times Roll" and "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Cryin'". Critical reception In a contemporary review, Joe Goldberg of the American Record Guide panned the arrangements as "hopelessly banal and inadequate, saved only" by the piano playing of Charles, who "comes through beautifully", and felt that only the last three songs give the album "its importance". He called "Am I Blue?" the album's highlight and "almost unbearably poignant, with the same feeling of deep sensibility transcending limited vocal equipment that can be heard on Walter Huston's recording of 'September Song', or Adolph Green's of 'A Quiet Girl'." In a retrospective review for AllMusic, music critic Scott Yanow wrote that "Charles' voice is heard throughout in peak form, giving soul to even the veteran standards." In a 1990 review of its CD reissue, Lloyd Sachs of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that The Genius of Ray Charles is "one of the all-time great albums. But it is not, alas, one of all the all-time great CDs. The sound is extremely harsh, exaggerating the partially hidden flaws of the original ...