FIT FOR A GENIUS RAY CHARLES' FINAL PROJECT TOUCHED ALL WHO WORKED ON IT.

Byline: Sandra Barrera Staff Writer

Elton John came walking through the door just as the ``Genius Loves Company'' producers were preparing a copy of the song he and Ray Charles had recorded earlier in the day.

Taking a seat at the mixing board, John listened to the playback of ``Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word'' as his eyes welled with tears. The singer-songwriter said it was one of the ``most impactful'' moments of his career, says John Burk, one of the album's producers.

But he adds there were a few of those ``gut-wrenching ... really, really moving'' moments during the making of the duets album, nominated tonight for 10 Grammys, including album of the year.

Charles' last and best-selling record of his six-decade career (at 1.2 million copies as of December, according to the latest SoundScan tally) was produced by Burk and Grammy-winning producer Phil Ramone.

But the initial idea came from Burk, who is also executive vice president of Concord Records, the label Charles was signed to prior to his death in June 2004.

One of the forces driving the record, Burk says, was to remind the record-buying public and the critics about Charles.

``He's made jazz records, country records, soul records and pop records and was very successful in all of these genres; I don't know who else has done that,'' Burk says. ``This is why I thought he could do a really great duets record. He could be Ray Charles in all these different genres ... with different people, and still unify an album.''

Fortunately, getting Charles to commit to ``Genius Loves Company'' took little convincing on his part.

Burk says he just gave it to him straight.

``Look,'' he recalls saying to Charles, ``you've had such an amazing impact in American music that it just seems wrong to me that you're not making records that are big events ... and I'd like to do something like that.

``So he gave me about a minute of silence, and then he said, 'I like that; let's do it.' ''

The only real hurdle for Burk was getting guest artists involved, since Charles refused to make any of the calls himself.

And so he turned to Ramone, who he calls his ``friend and mentor.''

Ramone was producing the 2003 televised ``Songwriters Hall of Fame'' tribute to Van Morrison, an artist who was high on Burk's list of potential guests. The two producers worked it so that Charles would present Morrison with the award and then later the two would go to a studio and record their track.

But scheduling conflicts prevented that from happening, and so the producers came up with an alternate plan. Charles and Morrison would record their duet live on the show.

That duet, ``Crazy Love,'' was the first song recorded for ``Genius Loves Company.''

With the record off to what looked to be a good start, the only obstacle remaining was fitting the other guests into Charles' tour schedule.

``Once we started up ... I think he started to feel the joy of having those people in the room with him,'' Ramone says.

It wasn't until the beginning of last year that both Ramone and Burk started to see signs of fragility in Charles, who had undergone a hip replacement halfway through the record.

Ramone says each producer would inquire about each others' sessions.

``You got into this thing of, 'He doesn't look very well,' and of course when people are ill, unless it's so obvious or somebody wants to give out clues, people keep it close to their chest,'' Ramone says. ``I highly respect that, but as we got near the end, we started to see him weaken down.''

Charles' frailty was most apparent on the day he recorded the final take of his duet with John, during which he gave a jaw-dropping performance. ``Everybody in the control room had a big lump in their throat,'' says Burk, who approached Charles after the performance with high praise.

The performance surprised Charles as well.

``I've been real sick,'' Burk recalls him saying. ``I don't know where that came from.''

That was the last time Charles sang.

Burk steers the conversation toward the Oscar-nominated film ``Ray,'' saying that he heard director Taylor Hackford say it took 15 years to get the movie made.

``All along, the years went by and he was getting frustrated and beginning to lose faith that it was going to come together, and Ray would say to him, 'It just ain't time yet,' which is really prophetic,'' Burk says. ``Now is Ray's time.''

Sandra Barrera, [phone]

sandra.barrera(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Ray Charles recorded the final duets on the Grammy-nominated ``Genius Loves Company'' as his health declined.

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times