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Ray Charles Duets CD 'Genius Loves Company' Features Goffin & King's "Hey Girl" Performed by Charles and Michael McDonald

LOS ANGELES, CA - The set list on Carole King's Living Room Tour  was very fluid. King's first concert tour in over a decade was an intimate production, a showcase for songs and songwriting that included a new song written, or at least begun, on stage each night by King, her guitarist/ musical director/ producer, Rudy Guess and one of Carole's favorite co-writers, award-winning songwriter, Gary Burr. Changing nightly, her set list reflected what King and her musical accompanists felt like performing that day.

One Goffin/King classic that she performed in city after city is "Hey Girl," first recorded by Freddie Scott in 1963. As noted in Billboard Magazine, "Hey Girl" was also one of Ray Charles's favorite songs. In fact, "Hey Girl" is featured as a duet with Ray Charles and Michael McDonald in Genius Loves Company, a collection of duets completed by Charles shortly before his death.

"Ray loved that song," commented McDonald in Billboard, "and I knew why, because it's one of my favorite Carole King/Gerry Goffin songs." Charles asked McDonald to sing the song with him after he heard it on McDonald's Motown album. "He thought I had written it," McDonald says. "So every time he would see me, he would go, 'Man, that's a great song.' And I'd go, 'I didn't write it. Carole King [and Gerry Goffin did],' and he said...'No wonder.' "

Genius Loves Company was released by Concord on August 31, 2004.