He was highly rated at the time. The reviews and articles all raved about his “classical training” with “emphasis on the Russian composers,” and his use of the key-bass wowed a lot of people into thinking that a keyboardist who used both hands at once was somehow remarkable.
I agree that keyboards predominated the Doors sound, but in my view that aspect of the sound was a product of the studio, where Ray’s simplistic contributions were overdubbed and tweaked into something considerably more interesting and impressive. But when they played live, his extremely limited imagination and skills became painfully conspicuous.
For the record: I saw The Doors in 1967, twice in '68, and in '70. (Also '72, post-Jim.) I loved them at the time, and 40 years later I still love their albums.
Apologies for ranting.
**Back On Topic:
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One of my favorite bad edits from the 60’s: The Mamas & Papas “I Saw Her Again”
The single was great. The album version included a horrible strings passage that destroyed the song’s momentum.
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I went many, many moons before learning what kind of bathroom Shock G got busy in as described in “The Humpty Dance.” And I have to say, I was really kind of disappointed that it was a Burger King bathroom. All that time, I had been eagerly anticipating what kind of delicious, titanic curse word I was deprived of by the radio edit, only to discover that it was all about not incurring the wrath of a burger joint. That’s not nearly as much fun.
The Radio Edit of ‘fire water burn’ (Aka ‘the roof is on fire’) by the bloodhound gang was pretty cool. Suitable censoring sound effects and bonus spoken word DJ scratching.
My mother had a CD with Curtis Mayfield’s ''Move on up" cut from 8 minutes to 3 minutes. that was pretty bad.
The album version of Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride”, on Steppenwolf the Second, has a curiously uninteresting instrumental interlude; the single lost nothing by having it edited out.
On the other hand… I always feel very disappointed when I hear “Crimson & Clover” on the radio and it’s the edited version. Also the version of “Sky Pilot” that simply amputates the last half of the song.
There were early edits where Humpty/Shock G raps “got busy in a fucking bathroom,” but even the album version has “Burger King.” My unfounded theory is that somebody dubbed in “Burger King” for the radio edit, and Digital Underground liked it so much they left it in for the album. Then when they went to release the single, they feared the wrath of BK’s lawyers, and ended up bleeping “Burger King” anyway!
BTW, Digital Underground’s “Doowutchyalike” is another candidate for this thread. The single is tight, but the album version pads it out with another two minutes of unfocused, dull noodling.
I’ve always thought the single version of VNV Nation’s “Standing” is far superior to the album version. I love both, but the single version is much stronger for me.
Although several slightly different sounding masterings were released over the years, the two least objectionable being on the original British EP and on the 2009 Remasters, the atrocious editing of the only surviving masters can’t be ignored.
Actually I did find a edit that improved the song–“Make Me Smile” by Chicago. Here’s the single edit. They cut the beginning and end of the song, and then stuck at the end this song! I have no idea why you’d have two songs with the same lyrics, but it works out great.