Charles last album due out in August

When Ray Charles was recording what would be his last CD, “Genius Loves Company,” at times he felt too sick to sing his best.

But even as his heath waned, the consummate musician always managed to dazzle, said producer John Burk.

“He would say, ‘I’m not feeling well today but I’ll take a stab at it, and I can come back to it later,’ ” Burk said. “And he never had to come back to it later.”

Charles, who died Thursday at age 73, recorded his last song for “Genius Loves Company” in March. The CD of duets with old friends and lifelong admirers, including Willie Nelson, Diana Krall, Gladys Knight and Elton John, is due out Aug. 31 on Concord Records.

Burk said working with the legend was intimidating at first, “but more than anything it was truly inspirational.”

Charles had a gift for “communicating the human emotion in a song,” he said. “That’s something that I didn’t fully appreciate until I got a chance to work with him one-on-one.

“That’s what we strive for in the recording process, is to find that human experience, and communicate it through a song … that was Ray’s gift.”