Ray Charles had plenty of No. 1 singles. Still, only one of his songs went to the top of the country charts. In 1985, Charles released “Seven Spanish Angels”, the song that would become his only chart-topping single at country radio. “Seven Spanish Angels” appears on Charles’s Friendship album. Charles sings the song, written by Troy Seals and Eddie Setser, with Willie Nelson.
“Seven Spanish Angels” says, “They could hear the riders comin’ / He said, ‘This is my last fight / If they take me back to Texas / They won’t take me back alive’/ There were seven Spanish angels at the altar of the sun / They were prayin’ for the lovers in the valley of the gun.”
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Released 25 years after Marty Robbins’s iconic “El Paso”, Seals later reveals they were channeling Robbins and his massive hit when writing “Seven Spanish Angels”.
“We started writing, hoping we could emulate Marty Robbins and ‘El Paso’,” Seals recalls. “We didn’t think we had a song like that, but that whole flavor of the Southwest and cowboys. Of course, the chorus is kind of an old wives’ tale, and an old story that’s been handed down.”
How Troy Seals and Eddie Setser Wrote “Seven Spanish Angels” for Ray Charles
Before “Seven Spanish Angels” was sent to Charles, it was sent to Friendship’s producer, Billy Sherrill, along with Nelson. The writers originally thought Charles might do the song with Ronnie Milsap instead. But before “Seven Spanish Angels” was recorded, Sherrill did some heavy editing to what was originally a very long song.
“The song was like in two movements,” Sherrill later recounts. “One of them was the ‘Seven Spanish Angels’ thing, and the boy and the girl and the soldiers coming and shooting. Then, it went into some sort of a refrain, and another melody that explained it all—why the angels, why there were seven, and all that. I called Troy and said, ‘Hey, man. This is like a book, not a song. It’s like you gotta sit down and take notes.’
“We just wiped out the whole other end of it,” he adds, “and ended up leaving you in the dark about what it meant, which I think contributed to the beauty of the song.”
“Seven Spanish Angels” is Charles’s only No. 1 single at country radio. Still, Charles did have other country hits. His successful country singles include “Born To Love Me” and“ Two Old Cats Like Us”, the latter a duet with Hank Williams Jr.
In 2021, Charles was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Photo by Robert Alexander/Getty Images
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