(Credits: Far Out / The Eagles / Don Henley)
Thu 18 December 2025 18:30, UK
When Don Henley and Glenn Frey first joined Eagles, they weren’t going to settle for average singers.
They had grown up on some of the greatest vocalists that California had ever produced, and since they were in the same area that birthed Brian Wilson, there was no way they could go out there sounding rough around the edges. Every member of the band needed to be able to carry a tune, but there’s a difference between singing a song and embodying one whenever you’re behind the microphone.
It’s not like the head Eagles didn’t understand that, either. Both of them had enough humility to understand when a song suited someone else’s voice better, and while they would hand off songs to Randy Meisner on ‘Take it to the Limit’ or Timothy B Schmit on ‘I Can’t Tell You Why’, it was clear that Henley was the true frontman of the group whenever he opened up that golden throat of his on their classics.
But Frey had a much different voice half the time he sang. He was more comfortable with the rock and roll tunes, and despite not having the same vocal register as Henley, his weary voice was absolutely perfect for a song like ‘New Kid in Town’. A lot of that came from practice and musical instinct, but each of them knew that the great singers hit people in their soul first before getting every single note right.
While they were both avid fans of people like Hank Williams and The Beatles, there was always a healthy respect for the greatest voices in soul music as well. Frey had already come from Detroit and had a decent education of all things Motown, but few could compare to the massive presence Ray Charles had whenever he started singing tunes like ‘What’d I Say’ or ‘Hit the Road Jack’.
When talking about Charles’s ballads, though, Frey felt that no one could compare to songs like ‘Worried Mind’ when he covered it for his standards album After Hours, saying, “There’s no beating Ray. It was on a country album that he did, and I always loved it. I thought, it’d be nice on an album full of very sophisticated chord changes to do something a little simpler.” The melody was perfect, but what endeared Charles to Henley was that country background as well.
Other country legends like Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers had their place, but Henley knew Charles outshone them all, saying, “This man is my favourite singer of all time. He has never been known necessarily as a country artist, but he did a groundbreaking album back in the 1960s called Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music.” And coming from the country world, it’s saying a lot that Charles was able to inhabit this kind of music.
I mean, it’s not like soul music and country music are exactly the closest genres in the world, but when Charles stepped behind the piano, he made both of them sound so nicely when played together. ‘Georgia On My Mind’ might be one of the almighty anthems of country music, but even in a world where Willie Nelson has done a brilliant version of it, Charles brings so much gravitas to the song that you would swear that he lived out every single second of his life in Georgia.
Charles may have had a lot more to offer to the world than country music, but the fact that it resonated with Eagles is one of the many reasons why he should be so revered. He never claimed to be the greatest singer in the world, but when you start singing from the heart, there’s no one else that can touch you.
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