When Horn Honors Charles Without Sounding Like Him
Horn captures Ray's spirit while staying entirely herself—ballads and medium-tempo grooves that feel unhurried and true.
Shirley Horn never tried to sound like Ray Charles, and that's precisely what makes Light Out of Darkness (1993) work. Horn was always a singer who moved at her own pace, intimate and deliberate, whispering rather than belting. Putting her in front of Ray's songbook could have felt like a mismatch—two very different voices, two approaches to the same American songbook. But Horn's restraint finds something in these arrangements that a more theatrical delivery might have missed: the loneliness in the ballads, the conversational ease in the medium-tempo tunes. AllMusic reviewer Scott Yanow caught it exactly: "Horn sounds nothing like Charles, but she sometimes captures his spirit." That's not a compromise. That's the whole point. By this stage in her career, Horn had spent decades perfecting the art of singing less, not more. She knew how to let silence do work. Here, she applies that discipline to Ray's catalog, and it holds up. The album leans harder on ballads than her typical session, but Yanow noted that it includes "more medium-tempo tunes than usual for a Shirley Horn set"—which means the pacing moves around enough to keep things from feeling stuck. It's a fun record, which matters. Not every tribute album needs to be reverent. Horn understood that honoring someone means being honest about who you are while engaging with what they left behind.
Who's playing
Tyler Mitchellbass
Shirley Hornpiano
Charles Ablesguitar
Gary Bartzalto saxophone
Steve Williamsmembranophone
Where next?
More by Shirley Horn
Here’s to Life 1992
Loads of Love 1963
Shirley Horn With Horns 1963
I Thought About You: Live at Vine Street 1987
The musicians on this record
Their own records, close in time
