Liner Notes

Ray Charles: Genius & Soul – The 50th Anniversary Collection

$69.98

THE MAN

Nothing has prepared you for the encounter. The neighborhood, in the long shadow of downtown Los Angeles, is urban bleak -- tire stores, upholstery outlets, taco stands, cash-checking services. The two-story building is perfectly innocuous; the second floor, where the man has worked and recorded for the past 35 years, is a windowless affair. The feeling is utilitarian, the decor unexciting. Except for the music biz magazines on the coffee table, you might be sitting in an insurance office. But when you're escorted down a short hallway into his private office, when the door opens and suddenly you encounter him face-to-face, when you shake his hand and feel the electricity coursing through his body, you're buzzed, you're amazed; you've never entered an energy field quite like his. This is the private world where Ray Charles rules.

"Ray Charles," said New Yorker writer Brendan Gill, "is a presence unlike any other." Gill understated his case. Ray Charles is a force of nature, a man who now seems incredibly simple, now incredibly complex. His confidence is rock solid, sturdy as a great oak. At 67, he appears indestructible, bouncing around the office with the gusto of a teenager. A beguiling mix of big-city savvy and back-country crude, Ray reacts to your visit with high-spirited hospitality. You've come to elicit from him an overview of his remarkable career, to play him the songs from this collection so you might hear his own reactions, glean his own insights.

In this arena Ray's blindness is beside the point. He moves around the office -- in fact, around the building -- with breakneck speed and unhampered efficiency. He knows every inch of this territory, commanding the space with an almost haughty sovereignty. He's the first to say, "I love being a big fish in a little pond." Ray's restrictions -- his small suite of offices, his compact recording studio -- afford him freedom. The walls are covered with every imaginable award. He sits in a high-back chair behind an expansive desk. His relationship to the chair reminds you of his relationship to the piano stool he occupies during concerts; in gracefully daring ways, he slips and slides, dips and nearly drops to the floor before catching himself. His body follows the surprising twists of his discourse. He can't sit still. His energy won't allow it. His enthusiasm -- for talking, for playing, for merely being alive -- has him moving in many directions at once. Mentally and physically, the man is all over the map.

His physical bearing is impressive. Broad shoulders, thick chest, taut waist, no sloppy body fat, he projects the pluck of a former welterweight ready to return to the ring at a moment's notice. He keeps his hair, now nearly white, close-cropped, the same style he's always worn. "I see cats my age dying their hair with black shoe polish," he says. "Wanna look younger. Gotta look younger. Well, I'm not putting that crap on my head. I've earned this white. I'm not changing. Been saying this for 40 years, and I'm still saying it: Sweetheart, I don't change."

His appearance is neat, his snug trousers of good fabric, his shoes mirror-polished. He shaves with a straight razor and does a superclose job. Only a tuft of unruly hair, caused by his nervous manner of rubbing his scalp, gives the slightest impression of disorder. From certain angles, the tuft makes him look like a little boy.

Constancy is a virtue. Constancy is Ray's trademark. Constancy is Ray's security. His routine is his comfort. His comfort is his excitement. In a strange way, his blindness is another source of excitement. Ray is cocky about his ability to do what any sighted person can do -- and more. Rather than represent defeat, his blindness has come to symbolize triumph. His sightlessness is symbolized by the coolest object in his sartorial arsenal -- his dark glasses. His glasses are fascinating, and you find yourself staring at them, thinking how they well may be the ultimate statement of hip. After Ray Charles, everyone wanted to wear shades.

"Never thought about my glasses being hip," says Ray. "When I started out, never could even afford glasses."

"When I first saw Ray in the early '50s," Charles Brown once explained, "he'd come out there without glasses. His talent was so great, you hardly noticed the way his eyes squinted closed. But I said, 'Maybe that boy should wear some shades. Might give him a look.'"

The look hasn't changed in a half-century. Aside from Ray's voice, his shades are his most identifiable trademark. Their shape -- the thick temples, the sleek, impenetrably dark lenses -- suggest mystery, even inscrutability. They seem to say, I can't see, but, man, I sure can feel. They both draw you to him and keep you at a distance. In the intimacy of his office and the immediacy of his own building, his blindness affords him extra power, gives him distinct advantage. You're certain he's viewing a deeper reality than your own seeing eyes will allow.

It's his voice that hits you hardest. After all, his voice is the reason you're here. As well as being a great singer, Ray Charles is a great talker, an extravagant teller of tales, a man who revels in a straight-line relationship between thought and expression. He thinks it; he says it. He revels in his own vulgarity; he loves to curse, just as he loves to surprise you with an especially eloquent phrase.

Just as Ray enjoys his own singing, he enjoys the sound of his unselfconscious banter. His talk is musical. Or maybe it's the other way around. His music is conversational. Either way, he's making music with his mouth. You sit and look and listen to what is essentially a performance, a verbal tour de force.

When you question him, his body stays still. He turns his head towards you and listens with rapt attention. Before responding, he may wait several seconds. At times, searching for the right words, he'll emit a long "hmmmmmmmmm." Ray has a slight stutter. But once he gets on a roll, he's gone. The texture and tone of his voice will change; he'll exclaim in a high tenor or reflect in a low baritone. To a woman on the phone, he's dripping molasses; to a business associate, he bellows with authority. Regardless of your gender, he calls you "honey" or "sweetheart." His voice is porous, versatile, and so directly linked to his feelings that you never doubt his sincerity.

The variations in his voice bring to mind the kind of country preachers he first heard as a boy. There is a decided rhythm, a seductive syncopation to his stories. Verbal excitement is part of his charm. Some words are whispered, attacked, elongated, or chopped off at the knee.

In an era when many bemoan the absence of self-esteem, Ray has self-esteem to spare. One of his favorite expressions is, "Don't forget, honey, I love me." The remark doesn't seem egotistical, but purely factual. The man likes himself. The man respects himself. He's his own biggest fan, and isn't the least ashamed of saying so. "Whatever's happening in music," he says, "I know I can sing my ass off." As an artist in a world of critics, he displays little vulnerability and no apparent fear. "Sometimes I've clipped the nasty reviews I've gotten," Ray recalls, "and hung 'em on the wall. Just put 'em there to show myself they ain't gonna kill me. My music's not about pleasing critics; it's about pleasing me."

Spread out between him and your seat by the side of his desk are the five compact discs that compose this collection. At this point of his life you wonder what he thinks of his five-decade career. You wonder how he views the body of his work -- the stylistic innovations, the remarkable diversity. Before you slip in the first disc to get his reaction, you think back to where he came from, and the wonder of his unprecedented achievements.

THE BACKGROUND

The raw facts are startling: Born into abject poverty during the Great Depression in the viciously racist Deep South, blinded at age six, orphaned at 15, Ray Charles was nonetheless a roaring success by the time he was 25. How he overcame such stringent obstacles is a study in hell-bent tenacity. How he changed the course of American music speaks to the nature of his peculiar genius.

He was born Ray Charles Robinson on September 23, 1930, in Albany, Georgia, and grew up in northwest Florida in the tiny town of Greenville. He's quick to tell you he's a backwoods boy. Like a country lawyer who loves saying he's just a country lawyer, Ray can camouflage his sophistication behind the guise of a bumpkin. He can also confuse facts about his early life. When he and I were working on his autobiography, Brother Ray, for instance, in 1976, he spent many hours describing his mother, Aretha. In his memory, she emerged as a contradictory character, a woman who seemed to both indulge him and discipline him with equal fervor. Then one day Ray said, "I had two mothers. Aretha was the one who set down the rules. But Mary Jane was my father's first wife. I don't believe he married Aretha. I barely knew my father. He wasn't around. He'd left Mary Jane to work the railroads. And these two women raised me. These two women loved me and gave me everything I needed to get by."

Getting by became a lifelong art form. Ray's strategy for survival -- emotional and practical -- started early. In cruel succession, he faced what might have been devastating blows: At age five, he watched his only sibling, four-year-old George, drown in a washtub, despite Ray's effort to pull him out. Then months later, Ray slowly began losing his sight. By age six, he was blind. The cause remains a mystery. The medical expertise was questionable, but Ray suspects glaucoma.

It should have been a tragedy, but wasn't. In fact, blindness and its aftermath set him up for eventual victory. Blindness challenged him, tested him, and finally served to strengthen his resolve. He credits Aretha.

"Looking back," he says, "I'm amazed by the wisdom of that little country woman. It was like she saw what was ahead of me, and she was dead set on making sure I could cope. Today they call it 'tough love.' When I got to feeling sorry for myself, she'd get tough and say, 'You're blind, you ain't dumb; you lost your sight, not your mind.' And she'd make me do my chores, make me clean house, make me see I could do almost anything anyone else could do. Didn't overprotect me until I was scared of the world. Showed me I didn't have to be scared of anything. I even wound up riding a borrowed bike around the woods. A friend would yell when I was about to crash into a tree, so I learned to avoid disaster. Learned to make my own way."

Ray's way led to the Red Wing Café and Mr. Wylie Pitman, the first real-life musician he encountered. "Called him Mr. Pit," Ray remembers. "He was the cat who set my soul on fire. Played him some mean boogie woogie piano. That was the style back then. I'd heard Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis coming out the jukebox, but Mr. Pit, who owned the café and this upright piano, man, Mr. Pit was live. He'd let me jump in his lap and fool with the keys myself. Couldn't play nothing, but Mr. Pit was beautiful, he'd say, 'Go on, Ray! Go on and mash those keys!' I love the man to this day 'cause he could have shooed me away. Instead he made me feel like the piano was my friend. Made me feel like me and the piano went together real good."

Together with the good-news gospel of the rural Shiloh Baptist Church and the songs of country bluesmen like Tampa Red and Washboard Sam, Mr. Pit's busy boogie woogie introduced the blind boy to the joyful complexities of African-American music.

By age seven, Ray was separated from the country village of his childhood on orders from Aretha. "Leaving Mama might have been tougher than going blind. I'd never been away, and here she was insisting I get on a train and ride something like 160 miles to St. Augustine. See, she found out about a state school for the blind. Found out I could go there for free. Most women would never let go of their only child like that. But Mama wasn't most women. Mama knew I needed the tools of education. She didn't have those tools, bless her heart, but she sure knew where to find them for me. Getting on that train and leaving Mama was the most miserable day of my life, but it also saved my life."

The school itself was segregated, as Ray puts it, "every goddamn which way you could imagine." That meant the blind from the deaf, girls from boys, and, most pointedly, black from white. "Imagine separating kids according to color when we couldn't even see each other," Ray exclaims. "Now ain't that a bitch!"

Somehow Ray adjusted. Educationally, Ray even thrived. He quickly learned Braille and developed a lifelong habit of reading. He remains a voracious reader to this day. He also learned to write well. (Recent e-mails from Ray remind me of his succinct and expressive prose.) His interest in all things mechanical, which began as early as age three, was encouraged. He learned to repair radios and car engines. Most significantly, though, he benefited from formal instruction on piano. From some of the older boys playing jazz, and from teachers challenging him with pieces by Chopin and Strauss, he rapidly improved. He took to formal instruction and became a proficient reader and eventually writer of musical composition. He also picked up everything he heard on the airwaves. Then, as now, he was open to all styles.

"Take Artie Shaw," he says. "He was one of my first heroes. Didn't even know he was white. Didn't even care. Even more than Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw had the clarinet technique I loved. That perfect tone, that sweet sound. Plus he swung his ass off. Artie Shaw is the reason I took up the instrument myself.

"I'd say hero number two was Art Tatum. Tatum was God. Man did more to a piano than anyone who's ever lived. I wasn't good enough to carry Tatum's shit bucket, but that didn't stop me from trying. Tatum played modern, and I wanted to play modern; I wanted to sound like right now. Tatum showed me how far your imagination can carry you. Long as you got the chops."

Chops became a lifelong obsession -- constructing chords, playing in all keys, playing in all tempos, switching styles at the drop of a hat. Individuality was not yet a concept. Like most kids, Ray was delighted to copy, thrilled to sound anything close to the original.

"My ears were sponges," he says. "Soaked it all up. There were radios around, and of course I'd listen to the big bands. The white ones, like the Dorsey Brothers and Glenn Miller, had a smooth kinda swing. But I felt like the black ones swung harder. I mean Lucky Millinder, Buddy Johnson, Ellington, and Basie. All the singers fascinated me. Didn't care if it was Vaughn Monroe or Dick Haymes. I liked Jo Stafford, and I loved Billie Holiday. The singers I dug most had the most personality; they put attitude into song. I even dug hillbilly attitude when it was done right, like Hank Williams and Hank Snow. I spent many a night listening to The Grand Ole Opry. But right after that, I might find someone who had a record player and stay up listening to the Golden Gate Quartet or the Wings Over Jordan, gospel groups who made me happy with those harmonies and shouting rhythms I'd heard as a baby back in Greenville."

Ray embraced the enormous variety of American popular culture of the the 1930s and '40s. Somehow the prejudiced nature of his immediate environment did not embitter him. Later he would say, "I was more interested in getting ahead than getting back." Because he was both curious and smart, he learned in a variety of forms the same essential lesson: Music must entertain.

In 1945, not yet 15, Ray faced his most severe and painful challenge since going blind. The school informed him that Aretha had died in Greenville. She was barely 30. The news traumatized Ray. He went home for the funeral and found himself unable to cry, eat, or even talk. He stayed in a state of shock. "Everyone started worrying about me," he says. "They thought I'd gone nuts. I had. Mama was the world to me, and with Mama gone, I didn't wanna face the world. Didn't wanna face nothing."

It took the village matriarch, a woman named Ma Beck who had mothered 22 children, to reach Ray's suffering heart. "She took me and shook me and told me to stop feeling sorry for myself," Ray remembers. "She said what Mama would have said, 'Boy, you gotta go on.' Ma Beck was the one who broke me down. Tears just poured out of me. For days, I cried like a baby."

In the aftermath of his near breakdown, Ray realized he was no longer a child. "Not having a mother," he says, "flipped everything around in my mind. I'd been lonely in school, but I got used to that kind of loneliness. That was different. This meant there was nothing and no one in the world to catch me when I fell." In practical terms, he faced the first crossroads of his young adult life: whether to return to school or go out in the world. He spent part of a summer in Greenville and then went to Tallahassee to stay with friends, all the while mulling over his next move.

"Maybe school made me feel safe," Ray reflects. "But school also fenced me in. I'd been in St. Augustine nearly eight years, and I knew the place, knew the teachers. Felt like they taught me what they had to teach. Got me some good basic instruction, but the school could only show me so much. In my own way -- call it cockiness or whatever you like -- I figured I was ready for the world."

Ray returned to Greenville to say goodbye to Mary Jane and the community that took a special interest in him. He remembers talk of a collective effort to buy him a seeing-eye dog. "Didn't like that idea," he states emphatically. "Three things I wouldn't have -- no dog, no cane, no guitar. I associated those things with helplessness and begging. Mama had taught me to rely on my own brain. I appreciated people's kindness but didn't want people's sympathy. Sympathy for what? I was young and strong. Besides, I could play the piano and sing in tune. Watch out!"

A brave spirit and restless energy brought Ray to Jacksonville. "I knew it to be the biggest city in the state, and that's where I wanted to be. Wanted to see what it was like to play with working musicians. And naturally I wanted to make money. Had to make money. Had to see if I could make money playing music. That's one of the reasons I followed Charles Brown and Nat Cole so closely. They were popular, but also helluva musicians."

A word about the California piano trio style, embodied by Brown and Cole, that so deeply influenced young Ray: With roots in the great masters -- Fats Waller, Art Tatum, Earl Hines -- Nat Cole and Charles Brown were not only virtuosos but marvelously distinctive vocalists as well. Two notes out of their mouths and you knew who they were. Cole was the more sophisticated of the two. His drummerless instrumentation -- piano, bass, and guitar -- rendered a lighter, more liquid sound. During those frenetic war years when jazz was birthing bebop, Cole incorporated the new lexicon without losing a sense of easy-to-follow melody. He was a modernist, but always accessible.

"And naturally I noticed that white people liked Nat Cole as much as us," adds Ray. "No one had to tell me that white people had the money."

Black people adored Charles Brown. He, too, came out of the two-fisted, no-holds-barred school of heavyweight pianists in which Ray was such a serious student. Brown had first been FEATUREd with Johnny Moore and the Three Blazers, another popular guitar-bass-piano trio, before going out on his own. Unlike Cole, though, Brown was primarily a blues singer, Texas-bred and deeply funky, who added a new dimension to the big-city blues. His blues were kicked-backed California cool.

"The thing about Nat Cole and Charles Brown," says Ray, "is that I could actually imitate them. I'm not talking about stealing a lick here and there, but flat-out copying. I'd sing their hits at little clubs, and people would close their eyes and hardly know the difference. See, I saw that as a way to get gigs. Remember now, I'm still this country kid trying to figure out how the world works. Well, it works by giving people what they wanted. And what they wanted was Nat Cole and Charles Brown. Someone asked me if I felt bad being a copycat for so long. Feel bad? I said, Honey, I feel good any time I can make good money making good music!"

Making money was the chief challenge of Ray's teen years as he bounced around Florida, moving from Jacksonville to Orlando to Tampa, living in flophouses, flopping at friends' houses, sometimes working, sometimes starving. The scuffle was intense. From big bands to solo piano gigs, Ray took what he could. His strategy was survival at any cost.

"Back then, man," he says with a smile, "I even worked in a hillbilly band called the Florida Playboys. It was a big group, couple of fiddlers, regular guitar and steel guitar both. Funny thing is that the band was all-white. But no one seemed to mind me being there, long as I played the right notes. Even sang a little. I remember doing 'Kentucky Waltz.'"

Today, some 50 years later, he still points with pride to his extreme stylistic flexibility. "I see myself like a utility man on a baseball team. You can play me in the infield or the outfield. Might even catch or do a little pitching. What do I mean by that? Well, I'll play a jazz festival one week and the next week you can fit me on a blues bill or even send me down to Nashville and throw me in with the country folk. I like that. That means I keep working."

Ray's way of finding work in the maze of the American music scene, with its baffling twists and turns, is best seen in his recordings. Listening to those songs, Ray reflects on his long struggle for acceptance as he tells you the story of his singular approach to art and life.

THE MUSIC

The Forties and Fifties

The Florida music scene toughened Ray to the wider world of show business. From ages 15 through 18, he negotiated the emotions of small acceptance and large rejection. Ambitious to hook up with a national figure, Ray auditioned during this down period for Lucky Millinder, whose big band competed with Ellington, Basie, and Lunceford. Lucky was not lucky for Ray.

"Told me I didn't have what it takes," remembers Ray. "Put it just like that. At the time I thought Lucky was cold-blooded. But Lucky was just honest. I had potential, but in the '40s, jazz musicians were right on it; they didn't want to hear about no potential. Motherfuckers would cut you up in a jam session and serve your ass for dinner."

While Ray's Florida adventures yielded few material rewards, they ultimately boosted his confidence. He saw he could survive; shuffling from city to city, he saw he could deal with the road. That revelation would sustain him for a lifetime. Florida also served to stimulate his curiosity about the world outside Florida. Ray had a live-in girlfriend who would eventually give birth to his first child. But no woman or child -- and over the years, Ray would have many -- would ever change the focus of Ray's career. He knew he had to get away and, less than three years out of school, he decided to go as far as he could without leaving the U.S. According to Ray, the crucial moment came when he asked guitarist Gosady McGee to get a map and point to the city farthest from Tampa. When the answer came back "Seattle," Ray said, "I'm gone."

In the late '40s Seattle was smoking. The military presence meant party-time, and party-time meant work for musicians. Ray soaked up the steamy brew of old swing, new bop, and bubbling West Coast rhythm & blues. He could do it all, but leaned toward the Nat Cole/Charles Brown sound he had come to perfect. He formed his first group and called it the McSon Trio -- "Mc" for Gosady McGee and "Son" for Robinson, even though he'd soon drop his last name and be known as Ray Charles forever more. He hung out with Quincy Jones who, at 15, was three years younger. They would become lifelong friends.

"Ray was older and wiser than his years," says Jones. "He was one of my gurus. He taught me how to arrange, how to voice horns and reeds. He was this amazing spirit -- strong, brilliant, and completely open-minded. At a time when you were either in this camp or that camp, either a bebopper or a bluesman or a whatever, Ray was in every camp. 'It's all music, man,' he'd say. 'We can play it all.' And we did."

Seattle was intense from every point of view. Ray's writing expanded. He remembers composing big band charts of "Ghost Of A Chance" and Dizzy Gillespie's "Emanon." "I loved Dizzy and I loved Charlie Parker," he says. "I was amazed how they played lightning fast without losing the thread. I was excited by their minds. I could relate to their small band. But I could also relate to Louis Jordan's small band. Supertight -- that's what I like -- where every note is right and no note is wasted."

It was in Seattle that Ray tried heroin, a drug he would use regularly for the next 17 years. "No one made me do it," he states emphatically. "No one hooked me. I hooked myself. And I have no horror stories about it. I don't recommend it to a soul. I know it kills a lot of people. Maybe most people. But it didn't kill me. I stopped when I had to stop. And when I was doing it, it didn't stop me from making my records."

His first record, "Confession Blues," was cut in Seattle in 1949. Ray can't remember the studio, but does recall the circumstances. "Cat named Jack Lauderdale came to the Rocking Chair where I was playing and asked me if I wanted to make a record. Make a record! Those were the most beautiful words I'd ever heard."

"Hear me kinda kick back in that Nat Cole way," says Ray as he listens to "Confession Blues." "That's Gosady on guitar and Milt Garred on bass. The McSon Trio. It's actually a tune I wrote back in Florida. Funny part about this, my first side, is that there was a recording ban. Got fined $600. Hated that. Six hundred bucks was a fortune. But I wanted to record so bad, I'd have paid anything."

"Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand" was the first Ray Charles record to attract national attention. Released on Lauderdale's Down Beat/Swing Time label, it was recorded in L.A. in 1950 using two of the era's most prominent musicians, bassist Johnny Miller and guitarist Oscar Moore, Nat Cole's mainstay. Was Ray intimidated playing with his master's sidemen? "Not really," he says. "See, I knew what I could do. Truth is, I went out on a limb with this song. I sang in a Charles Brown style, but I had Jack Lauderdale find me a celeste. That's what you're hearing. Ain't no synthesizer, man, it's a true celeste. Sometimes I get these ideas about keyboard sounds. For the '40s, this was pretty daring. See, I wanted something lighter, almost dainty. I still like the way it sounds, and it stood out enough to get the record noticed."

A hit on the black charts (called "race records" back then) -- "Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand" led Lauderdale to record Ray with a bigger, more costly unit. "Kissa Me Baby," for instance, has Ray shouting in front of eight or nine pieces, including tenor saxist Stanley Turrentine. "Wasn't that experienced singing with bands that big," comments Ray, "but I could fit myself into the situation. I was learning to fit myself in any situation." It's interesting how, in the very opening line, he quotes from his earlier success, "Baby, won't you let me hold your hand," a device common to rhythm & blues.

In 1950, encouraged by Jack Lauderdale and fueled by his own ambition, Ray moved to Los Angeles. "Jack was an important player in my career," says Ray. "Jack was the first of many record men who never thought I needed a producer. He never told me what to sing or how to sing. I loved that. And I appreciated that. These guys saw fit to let me follow myself. Jack also knew I needed road work, so he hooked me up with Lowell Fulson, a guitarist in the T-Bone Walker mold. Lowell was a big name back then. I played piano in his band, wrote charts, and soon became his musical director. During his show, I'd do a couple of numbers of my own."

"Ray Charles," remembers Lowell Fulson, "gave the band a snap it never had before. He could write arrangements from his head, just calling out the notes to one of the cats who'd write them down. Ray heard it all in his head."

By 1952 Ray had been around the country several times with Lowell and was eager to go out on his own. He signed with the Shaw Agency, who booked him as a single, meaning Ray had to pick up whatever musicians were available wherever he happened to be. Around the same time, while Lauderdale's label was suffering financially, Ray was courted by Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson of Atlantic, another independent R&B label, but one with unusual savvy about making and marketing black music.

"I'd heard Ray's 'Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand,'" recalls Ertegun, an intellectual who'd prove to be one of the era's keenest promoters of pop. "I recognized his talent and wanted him on Atlantic. We met him in a Harlem hotel, offered a contract, and that was it."

"I'd call it one of the happiest relationships of my life," says Ray. "Ahmet and Herb and, a little later, Jerry Wexler were cats who understood me completely. They gave me songs they thought fit me, but if I said they didn't, no one argued. No one forced me. Truth is, I forced myself to write a lot of the songs, 'cause I wasn't happy with the material. I don't consider myself a real writer. I write out of necessity. In those early sessions, though, other people were writing the arrangements, guys like Jesse Stone."

Listening to "It Should've Been Me," Ray realizes the spoken verses could be seen as early rap. He laughs and says, "Oh man, I was just fooling with some jive-ass idea floating around my brain. Wasn't anything I'd heard before, but something that seemed like fun. That's Jesse Stone, I believe, yelling out 'With that real fine chick!'"

The early sessions for Atlantic on songs like "It Should've Been Me" and the blusier "Don't You Know" demonstrate the label's high standards of studio musicianship. Virtuoso guitarists like Mickey Baker and drummers like Connie Kay (later of the Modern Jazz Quartet) made many of the dates. "Ahmet put me with great players in the studio," Ray comments. "But out on the road, it was the luck of the draw. It was pickup bands. And, man, I hate pickup bands. Trying to get new cats to instantly understand where I wanted the music was hell. Made me cranky and frustrated and determined to get a band of my own.

"In those days, you didn't go through the record company to get a band, you went through your booking agency. But the Shaw Agency wasn't interested. Having a band meant buying a car and station wagon and all kinds of shit. They'd rather have me go out as a single with someone like Joe Morris. Took me months to convince them, and even when they said yes, it was only when I said my band would back up Ruth Brown, who was very hot with her '(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean.'"

Meanwhile, after a short stint in New Orleans where he produced a now-legendary session for Guitar Slim, Ray moved to Dallas, home of superlative saxist David "Fathead" Newman, another dear friend of Ray's. The first Ray Charles band included Fathead on baritone -- he'd later move to tenor -- another saxist, two trumpets, bass, drums, and Ray alternating between piano and alto sax. With his knack for making less sound like more, Ray voiced the septet to sound twice as fat. Furthermore, the musicians were schooled in post-bop or, as it would soon be called, hard bop. "Hard-core jazz musicians can play anything," Ray explains. "We'd play some burning jazz on the set, but we'd mainly play R&B, our bread and butter. For jazz cats, R&B is a breeze."

The breeze created by Ray's first band was more like a hurricane. The sound took the country by storm.

"I remember hearing "Come Back Baby" for the first time," says Aretha Franklin. "I was 12 or 13. Other than my father's voice in church, this was the most soulful thing I had ever heard. It was one of those thrilling emotional experiences that you never forget, almost as though your life is being changed."

At that moment, smack dab in the middle of the ultraconservative 1950s, Ray Charles changed American music. All the elements came together in a glorious and improbable synthesis of sound. With seven years of real-life arranging experience under his belt, Ray now commanded the voicings he had long sought; his aural vision came into sharp focus. Lean and clean, his septet became a single instrument capable of saying everything he wanted to say.

And his voice, around which his self-styled charts were molded, was finally his own. "Got tired of folks saying, 'Man, you sound just like Nat Cole; man, you sound just like Charles Brown," Ray freely admits. "I held on to those styles a long, long time, but after I was with Atlantic awhile, after I had me a few little hits, I figured I was my own man. So I sang in my own voice." That voice -- raw, real, bluer than blue and sanctified as Sunday morning -- signaled a new direction. The voice was filled with confidence, pain, joy; the voice was flexible, funny, loose enough to slide up to falsetto, fall into baritone funk, scream, whisper, shout out the good news. The voice projected a natural grace and straight-up honesty that caught and held the attention and affection of music fans, first in America, then the world.

Beyond the beauty of the voice was the daring musical form. Ray tore down the chain-link fence separating the secular from the sacred. He took gospel songs, retained their rhythms, changed their words, and invented a form soon to be called soul.

"Some preachers got on my ass," Ray remembers. "Said I was doing the devil's work. Bullshit. I was singing what I'd always sung. Keeping the spirit but changing the story so it related to the real world -- man, that came natural to me. I'm a realist. And as a realist, I figure that the music I knew, the churchy music I grew up on, was something I could draw on and adapt. So I did."

The great separation felt by so many African American singers between the holy church and unholy world was merely an abstraction to Ray Charles. It meant nothing. Ray was beyond superstitions. He did not fear the God who, in the minds of generations of church singers, forbade the mingling of genres. Ray's God was the God of One, the God for whom all music, rooted in honest expression of heart and soul, is righteous and true. Besides, he wanted to survive; he needed money.

So the songs came pouring out of him, a startling series of gospel-fueled, blues-based laments and celebrations, vignettes that spoke to the loss of love, the pang of loneliness, the glorification of women, the obsession of romance. Unlike contemporaries like Chuck Berry and Little Richard, Ray's aesthetics were not aimed at teenagers. They were too heavy, too adult. "Sometimes I'm thrown in with the cats who started rock 'n' roll," says Ray, "but I don't see it that way. My things weren't for kids. Kids later picked up on them, but they had a different feeling than Chuck and Richard. Chuck and Richard had grooves that drove the teens nuts. Seems like my grooves drew an older crowd. My writing had a different slant."

Ray is especially candid and unusually humble in describing his early writing. "Looking back over my career, I didn't do that much writing. But if people think of me as a writer, that's because what little writing I did was successful. Still don't consider myself a writer, not like a Duke Ellington or a George Gershwin. My shit is simple. Say what you gotta say in two, three minutes. Now write the words first 'cause that's the hardest part for me. Once you got your little story line, it's nothing to find the right notes. Remember, though, my main thing is singing. I gear up everything -- the song, the rhythm, the arrangement -- to highlight my voice."

Forty-three years after Ray recorded "I've Got A Woman" with his first-ever brand-new band, the sound still pierces the soul. Ray Charles' little bands of the '50s remain among the most influential musical units in the history of pop, rock, soul -- or whatever you name it. His early hits on Atlantic are a model of emotional efficiency, maximum impact in minimum time.

"My cats could really jam up," says Ray. "On 'I Got A Woman,' my first thing to hit #1 on the R&B charts, that's Donald Wilkerson on tenor. He was a man whose sax could make you cry. Wilkerson never got the recognition of a John Coltrane, but he had that kind of talent. There were beautiful cutting contests between Donald and Fathead. That's Fathead playing baritone, by the way, on "Greenbacks." "Greenbacks" was something like "It Should've Been Me," me switching 'tween rapping and singing. Just another jivey idea that popped in my brain. Other stuff came out of real life. Like "Blackjack." I wrote "Blackjack" because of T-Bone Walker. One night I won all his money playing blackjack and told him I'd write a song about it. I guess you'd call it an inside joke. "I Got A Woman," "Greenbacks," and "Blackjack" were all cut at some radio station in Atlanta, using whatever mikes were around. When it was time for the news, we had to stop recording."

"One of the astounding aspects of Ray's early recordings," says Jerry Wexler, who was at the Atlanta sessions, "was his flexibility. He could adjust to any circumstance. Even more striking was his complete proficiency at production. He had the total sound. We were the students, he was the teacher. We merely turned on the lights -- which he didn't even need."

"We cut 'A Fool For You' in Miami after I was up all night singing," says Ray. "Maybe it helped that my voice was hoarse. It's a serious song. I like it when I sing, 'Ever since I been five years old...way down in my soul.' I mean, that's saying something. I usually prefer other people's lyrics over mine, but this is one time when I came through. Sorry, man, but that song's pretty goddamn deep.

"I look at 'Hallelujah I Love Her So' as a breakthrough. Not that the song is any big deal. It's cute, but it caught on bigger than anything I'd ever done. That's when I started hearing the word crossover. Meaning what? Meaning whites were buying 'Hallelujah' in big numbers. White singers, like Peggy Lee, started singing cover versions. I took that as a compliment. Everyone could relate to the story."

Ray's recording career is a model of slow-but-steady momentum and expansion. A cautious producer by nature, he considered changes for months, even years, before executing them. "Take this idea of background vocals," he says. "On 'This Little Girl Of Mine' I used a vocal trio behind me -- Fathead, Wilkerson, and a girl called Mary Ann Fisher. As time went on, I thought it'd be hip to have all-girl voices behind. I liked the idea of being the only man with lots of women. Still like the idea today. Well, I heard a group called the Cookies and asked their leader, Margie Hendrix, if they'd sing with me. She said sure, and that was it."

The innovation would be adopted by everyone from Elvis to Prince. But where did Ray get the idea? "Church," he says. "People like James Cleveland and Albertina Walker and the Davis Sisters. Loved their background sounds, the way the girls echoed and built up the lead vocal. Loved the contrast."

When Ray wasn't writing his own songs, he was choosing gems written by others that sound as if they could have been written by him, classics like Doc Pomus' brilliant dirge "Lonely Avenue." "Drown In My Own Tears" is another priceless blue diamond. "Tell The Truth," written by Lowman Pauling, became a showpiece for Margie Hendrix, both in studio and live format. The concert cut, taken from that same Atlanta date, is among the most exciting moments in Ray's repertoire. Twenty years ago, I tried to describe it in Brother Ray: "After Margie Hendrix rasps and claws her way through a chorus and Fathead plays one of his emerald-cut solos, Ray pulls the hair from his head and the lightning from the sky, screaming as though he just discovered a gold mine or a murder."

Ray also loves reworking old chestnuts. "I'd hear songs," he says, "from back when I was a baby. Silly stuff like 'My Bonnie' or 'Swanee River.' Suddenly I'd say, 'Hey, I think I can fix these songs where they can fit me.'" In both instances, his ability to convert the hackneyed to cutting-edge country-church funk becomes a study in ironic grace. No one can turn Americana on its head like Mr. C.

Exit Fifties/Enter Sixties

Nineteen fifty-nine was the year. Before then, Ray Charles was a consistent hitmaker of a new-fangled rhythm & blues. He also won recognition as a jazz artist. In 1958, when he played the Newport Jazz Festival, his band surprised the devotees with their blistering brand of soul bop. His Soul Brothers collaboration with vibist Milt Jackson was a stunning meditation on pure-heart jazz in blue. In the summer of 1959, though, he exploded with the biggest record of his career. Ray tells the story:

"Hank Crawford had joined the band. Everyone knows Hank's a helluva alto man, but in those days he was playing baritone -- I'd double up on alto -- and Hank was also writing. I'd dictate charts to him, and he soon learned my writing style. With Hank around, I was getting more arrangements done, but on this one particular night we'd run out of arrangements. Man, we'd run out of tunes. It was 1 a.m. and the owner said we needed to play another ten minutes, so I just started jamming and told everyone, including the Raeletts, to follow me. That jam became 'What'd I Say.' By the crowd reaction I knew we had something. The crowd went wild. We stormed into New York a few weeks later and cut it. Before then, everyone was laughing at me for playing electric piano. After 'What'd I Say,' those same cats were running out scrambling to buy electric pianos of their own."

"What'd I Say" became an anthem of playful sexuality; its call-and-response mocked the rhythms of lovemaking. Several stations went so far as to ban the song. "Pissed me off," says Ray, "because the ban was lifted when white singers sang my song. What were the stations saying -- that black sex is dirty and white sex is clean? It was crazy, but I didn't care. More they played it, more royalties for me."

In startling contrast to the ebullience of "What'd I Say," Ray redefines abject depression in "I Believe To My Soul." The song is notable not only for the riveting honesty of his hopeless lament, with its shocking allusion to violence, but also because Ray overdubbed all four background vocals himself. "The Raeletts were distracted that day," he recalls. "The girls couldn't cut it right. So I cut them loose and cut it myself."

Later that same year, Atlantic released Ray's version of Hank Snow's "I'm Movin' On." The title would prove prophetic. "First straight-up country & western song I recorded," remembers Ray. "Still bothers me that Chet Atkins couldn't make the date. Always wanted to do more country, but the timing wasn't right. So many other things were happening so fast."

Other things included Atlantic's most extravagant Ray Charles production, an album titled The Genius Of Ray Charles. One side consisted of ballads with lush strings; the flipside put Ray in front of a big band. "I was in heaven in both situations," he says. "See, I wanted to sing pretty things with lots of fiddles around me, and I wanted to sing bright things with the brass kicking my ass." In the album's original LINER NOTES, critic Nat Hentoff calls Ray "one of the most warmly personal and sensitive ballad singers of his generation."

Two of the most moving ballads are included here: "Don't Let The Sun Catch You Cryin'" and "Come Rain Or Come Shine." "The thrill for me," says Ray, "was having Ralph Burns write the arrangements. Coming up, I was a Woody Herman fan, and the name Ralph Burns was all over Woody's records." Ray's performances are heartbreakingly tender, a revelation that the rawness of his natural voice was as effective on slow standards as up-tempo R&B. If Nat Cole was the smoothest balladeer of his day, Ray would become the most soulful balladeer of his era.

"Let The Good Times Roll" was an especially joyous reunion of Ray and Quincy Jones, who wrote the chart, now a classic among big band voicings. Ray associated the song's positive energy with Louis Jordan. Among the band members, most of whom were on loan from Count Basie, Ray added his own trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, bassist Edgar Willis, Hank Crawford, and Fathead Newman, who solos with his usual elegant economy. Ray's shout, "Hey, y'all, tell everybody Ray Charles in town," is the announcement of the full flowering of his talent. By putting Ray in more sophisticated settings, producers Nesuhi Ertegun and Jerry Wexler proved the man could sing anything.

Ironically, in the wake of Ray's greatest triumphs on Atlantic -- "What'd I Say" as a single and The Genius Of Ray Charles as an album -- he left them for ABC. "That was a big move for me," he comments, "because I loved Ahmet and Nesuhi and Jerry. But I was growing up. Learning business. And when ABC offered a big advance, a richer royalty rate plus ownership of my masters, I was sold. I was also lucky that Sam Clark, the man at ABC, was basically as cool as Lauderdale or Wexler when it came to my music. He let me do what I wanted."

The first phase of Ray's ABC work was a continuation of his small band configurations begun at Atlantic. Two differences, though, are telling -- first, the band was better because it had expanded to include Leroy "Hog" Cooper on baritone sax; and secondly, Ray's repertoire had been augmented by his relationship with Percy Mayfield.

"Must have been about 1959 when Leroy joined the band. I'd met him in his hometown, Dallas, when I was living there. The minute I felt I could add an eighth member to the band, I had Fathead call Hog to join us. See, Leroy is a pure baritone saxist. That's his instrument. He's a big man, and he gets over his ax like it's a toy. Cat plays fast, plays filthy blues, plays anything. He plays with body and balls, and he gave that little band a bottom it never had before. Hank switched to alto, his main horn, I mainly stayed at piano and we really started to cook."

The initial ABC R&B singles are among the most satisfying in Ray's career. His long keyboard solo on "Sticks And Stones" is riveting. "I Wonder," the Cecil Grant jewel from the '40s, rivals "I Believe To My Soul" for suicidal fervor. And on "Them That Got," you hear the richness of Hog Cooper's fat baritone laying down a foundation that lifts the little band to new heights. Fathead's solo is another lyrical marvel. But perhaps the best of this series of singles are those composed by bluesman/singer/songwriter Percy Mayfield -- "Hit The Road Jack," "The Danger Zone," "But On The Other Hand Baby," "At The Club," and "Hide 'Nor Hair."

"I knew Percy as the singer and writer of 'Please Send Me Someone To Love,'" Ray explains. "Don't wanna go off on an ego trip, but Percy really liked me, and he'd come by and play me songs. We worked out an arrangement without signing any contracts that if I'd record his songs, I could also publish them. See, I was learning more business. Percy was beautiful, not just 'cause his songs were poetry, but 'cause he understood me. If his songs didn't fit me, he wouldn't take it personally. He'd just go back and write me another. And when they did fit, honey, the fit was perfect."

The happy Mayfield/Charles collaboration was marked by humor. A couple of years before he died in 1984, Percy told me, "I can make Ray laugh like no one else. I know what tickles the man, and I know how to put that tickle in the song so everyone gets a chuckle of it." The biggest chuckle was "Hit The Road Jack," a huge #1 hit in 1961 that turned heartbreak into a comedy skit. "At The Club" (which continues the spoken-story tradition of "It Should've Been Me") and "Hide 'Nor Hair" (with its tongue-in-cheek reference to Ray's real-life Dr. Foster) are also comic romps. Percy's -- and Ray's -- extraordinary versatility are also evident on the serious sides.

"The Danger Zone" is dynamite, a poignant and forever-true reminder of the relationships between politics and personal anguish. No harder-hitting words about current affairs have ever been written: "The world is an uproar, the danger zone is everywhere." And "But On The Other Hand Baby" may be the purest blues Ray has ever enunciated, Phil Guilbeau's muted horn an exquisite counterpoint to the story of equivocal love.

Singles like "Unchain My Heart," another Top 10 hit in 1961, kept Ray's R&B train in motion. His spirit was still afire. The same spirit, though, sought artistic expansion. The Genius album on Atlantic whetted his appetite for new musical dishes.

"Started fooling with the idea of a whole album strung together by a single idea," says Ray. "Couldn't call my ideas great. Might even call 'em jivey, but they were mine. They were little ideas and I liked them. The first one was an album of songs with names of the states. Corny? Hell, yes, but I'm a corny cat."

The album was called Genius Hits The Road and included "Georgia On My Mind," not only a towering hit, but also a song with which he will always be associated. "Came about by accident," Ray recalls. "Had me a driver who'd always hear me humming 'Georgia On My Mind.' Cat said, 'You hum it so much, why don't you record it?' 'Can't record it,' I said, 'cause I don't even know the words.' 'Well, the words are easier enough to find.' He was right. Man, he didn't know how right he was. There was other good shit on that Road album, but nobody played nothing but 'Georgia.'"

"Georgia On My Mind" altered the direction of Ray's career. He'd proved he could be equally successful singing a standard written outside his original genre of blues or rhythm & blues. Ray's ability to turn Hoagy Carmichael's 1930 piece of Southern nostalgia into a 1960 smash convinced him that the songbook was wide open; he could choose from a world of material, no matter what category, and personalize it to the point where fans felt he had actually written the song himself. This marks the virtual retirement of Ray the songwriter and the ascension of Ray the interpreter. He approaches the subject today with absolute clarity.

"Easier for me to find songs someone else wrote," he explains, "than to write them myself. Remember, I was writing when I had to. When I didn't, I could focus on singing. Besides, other writers can say things I can't express myself."

On his second ABC album, Ray came up with another "jivey" concept -- songs with women's names. "I keep it simple," says the man. "I like lots of women, I like thinking of women when I'm singing, so I wanna cut a whole album of women's names."

The two highlights of the record were "Ruby," the follow-up ballad hit to "Georgia," and "Hardhearted Hannah," a rock 'em, sock 'em, big band jumper crafted with Ray's heady mix of guts and wit.

Meanwhile, ABC was not unmindful of Ray's jazz side. In fact, they commissioned an album which mirrors his Genius sessions at Atlantic and, in some ways, surpasses them. Genius+Soul =Jazz is a milestone and still another Ray Charles masterpiece. Brought out on Impulse, an ABC subsidiary label (where John Coltrane, who also switched from Atlantic in this same time slot, continued to expand his sound), Genius+Soul represents some of Ray's most inspired work. The big surprise -- and delight -- is that he's playing the Hammond B3 organ, long considered the funkiest of keyboards. What prompted the move?

Ray laughs at the questions. "Sweetheart," he says, "wish I could give answers that sound reasonable and right, but the honest truth is that it's something I just wanted to do. I thought that an organ against the Basie big band might give me some drama. And the old man," he adds, referring to himself, "is always looking for drama."

The three tracks included here are killers, surefire candidates for a time capsule containing the most gripping 20th century art. "I've Got News For You" is a Ralph Burns chart custom-made for Ray and the Basie band (with the addition of Ray's trumpeter Phil Guilbeau). From the swamp fever of the organ intro to the blaring brass to the impassioned vocal and world-wise lyric, "News" is a barnstorming blues, magnificently constructed and faithful to the quirky persona of Mr. C. "You wore a diamond watch/Claimed it was from Uncle Joe/When I looked at the inscription/it said, 'Love, from Daddy-O'"¹ are words no reasonable listener will ever forget.

Quincy Jones wrote the arrangements for "One Mint Julep," which became Ray's first Top 10 instrumental hit. Jones also mapped out "I'm Gonna Move To The Outskirts Of Town," a blues as powerful as any Ray has ever sung. Quincy's horn punches are thunder and lightning, and Ray rains down on the Hammond B3 like the world is collapsing around him.

Some six months later, Ray returned to the studio for another experiment, a series of duets with Betty Carter. "I heard Betty years before when she was singing in Philly with Lionel Hampton," says Ray. "Her voice impressed the shit out of me. It was a free jazz voice; she had this floating quality that haunted me. When I went to ABC, I learned Betty was also on ABC. Good God, luck had struck again! I called my man Marty Paich 'cause I knew his charts would be right on the money, and, I'll tell you, the project was pure pleasure."

The Ray/Betty musical marriage rivals the unions of Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong and Dinah Washington/Brook Benton for intriguing compatibility. The coupling works sensationally well. Ray has never been more romantic or seductive, whether humorously, as in "Baby, It's Cold Outside," or tenderly, as in "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye." On "Goodbye," Ray infuses the lyrics with a quiet sweetness while Betty, sounding like a muted Miles, takes the story to an even deeper level of rue and relaxation.

In the early '60s, before the rise of Motown and Stax/Volt, at a time when pop music seemed especially saccharine, Ray was turning out a masterwork a month. On the heels of "Georgia On My Mind," "Ruby," "One Mint Julep," "Hit The Road Jack," and "Unchain My Heart," he was finally financially secure.

"First thing I did when I saw the bread," he asserts, "was get my own big band. Dreamt of having a big band for years. Always got excited by big bands. The ultimate backup for a singer is a big band. I love when my voice bounces off a big band. My first one was a bitch. Naturally I kept the cats from the small band -- Fathead, Leroy, Wilkerson, Belgrave, Guilbeau, Milt Turner, Edgar Willis -- and just added on till I got the 17 pieces I wanted. Hank Crawford became musical director. Later Leroy Cooper would take over that role. Quincy gave me a bunch of charts, and Hank and I wrote a bunch of our own. Look out, I was in business!"

Since the summer of 1961, the business of Ray Charles' big band has been booming. He tours the world with the unit even if, on occasion, he will bring only a trio to a symphony date. "My first choice," he says, "is always the band. It's an extension of me, like the piano, like my voice."

Sixties Still Sizzlin'

Just when it seemed Ray had done all there was to do, he did more. He made a move that surprised everyone but himself. He moved as far as he could from R&B, jazz, and standard songbook ballads, while still remaining in the realm of pop. He did what no other blues-based black singer had done before; he not only recorded country & western music, but, by virtue of his unprecedented success in the genre, he single-handedly gave it a mass appeal it had never before known. "Ray took country music to the world," says Willie Nelson. "And in some way the rest of us country singers are riding on his coattails."

"Didn't have any of that in mind," says Ray. "Wasn't trying to change the world. Just wanted to sing songs I loved. Had always loved. Had always felt were part of my growing up. After all, I'm a country boy. Of course I knew ABC had signed me for R&B. But "Georgia" and "Ruby" were more than R&B hits. They took me somewhere else. So now I figured I could go where I wanted. When I told Sam Clark about the idea, he wasn't sure. He thought I'd lose my fan base. 'If I do it right, Sam,' I said, 'I'll gain more fans than I lose.' Well, I guess I did it right, 'cause I had some monster hits."

"I Can't Stop Loving You," for example, shot to #1 on the pop charts in 1962 and stayed there for five weeks. Some purists claimed the white background singers were too syrupy. But Ray's black fans didn't agree; they kept it at #1 on the R&B charts for 16 weeks, a record.

"Funny, I didn't put the record together by trying to please the public," Ray notes. "I never do. I'm looking to please me. Keep in mind, this was just another jivey concept, like the names of cities or women. This was Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music. I had Sid Feller, my great friend and arranger, find me a mess of country songs. Sid researched the hell out of it and came up with 250 tunes. I picked the ones I liked, and of the ones I picked, they were all new to me except "Bye Bye, Love."

"I went for the lyrics. Always go for the lyrics first 'cause I'm a lyrics man. Gotta believe the story. See, I'm the actor and the lyrics are the script. Lousy script, lousy performance. So these country songs spoke to me through their lyrics. Think about it, man. 'Born to lose...I spent my life in vain.'² That's a heavy statement. So if people say to me, 'Ray, you sang the hell outta "Born To Lose," I say it's 'cause the words tore me up.

"Same goes for 'You Don't Know Me.' I mean, here's a man telling his woman something she needs to hear. And saying it in a poetry that brings a tear to your eye. I've been singing 'Take These Chains From My Heart' for 35 years now and the goddamn thing still breaks me up. Brother, these are some sad songs.

"As a genuine fan of country music, there were other songs I knew and associated with certain singers I loved. Take 'Your Cheating Heart.' That's Hank Williams. Now Hank was great, Hank was an original, but I was stupid enough to figure I could do Hank in my own way. Same goes for Buck Owens' 'Crying Time' and 'Together Again.' Didn't sing the songs out of disrespect for Buck. I'm crazy about Buck. But I heard something that fit my style. The key was keeping my style while watching my style work in different ways."

In spite of the shifting styles in pop music -- Motown, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Stones -- Ray's country material proved tremendously popular for most of the '60s. In 1962, after cutting Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music, Volume 2, he moved into the office building and studio he occupies today and headquartered himself in L.A. He would settle into a routine that would remain constant over the next four decades. Working a steady nine or ten months a year, gigging around the globe, he'd reserve the heavy winter months for TV appearances and recording, but, in truth, he would record all year long. He has been known to fly in from Paris, squeeze in a few hours of recording in his L.A. studio, then fly right back out to Rome. Like women, recording has remained his lifelong obsession. (Married twice, he has fathered nine children with seven women.)

In 1963 Ray reentered the kingdom of rhythm & blues with Ingredients In A Recipe For Soul. "Busted" was the big song from the album. Sid Feller, Ray's principal arranger in the '60s, produced the session. But Feller, like Wexler before him, gives production credit to Ray. "Ray always knew exactly what he wanted," says Feller, "and exactly how to get it. I was a facilitator. I could read him. I was honored to serve him. Things like 'Busted,' though, came out of Ray's guts. He created the ambience; he sold the song."

"Now that's a song," says Ray, "that takes me all the way back to Greenville. I got it off Johnny Cash, but put it in a blues bag. I know you're tired of me harping on lyrics, but lyrics are the key. Those lyrics hit me hard. Now matter how much money I got, when I sing, 'My bills are all due and the baby needs shoes and I'm busted'³ -- baby, I am busted."

"Busted" was another big hit, rising to #4 on the pop charts. Like "Georgia" and "What'd I Say," "Busted" remains part of practically every Ray Charles show 34 years after it was recorded. "Why shouldn't I sing 'Busted'?" Ray raises his voice when asked if he's bored by old material. "My fans aren't tired of it, and neither am I."

As the '60s wore on, it became clear that Ray saw his role as interpretive vocalist rather than original writer. His originality was -- is, and forever will be -- in interpretation. His willingness, even his bravery, in tackling old songs other singers might consider hackneyed became a trademark. With Sid Feller by his side, he gave new life to chestnuts like "That Lucky Old Sun." In the same summer session of 1963, he also cut "Ol' Man River," written in 1929 by Hammerstein and Kern for Show Boat. With Paul Robeson's operatic echoes in his head, Ray managed to make the song his own. The result is mesmerizing.

Sid Feller remembers the session because, in his view, Ray was ill. "He kept falling asleep at the piano," says Sid. "I think he must have had the flu. I just couldn't keep him awake."

"Don't know what was wrong with me," Ray comments. "Maybe overwork. Maybe I'd been up for days. Anyway, I did fall asleep on that song. Joe Adams, my manager, finally woke me up and said, 'Ray, that nap just cost you $5,000 in studio time.' I said, 'Oh shit,' and got up and sang the thing."

You can hear sleep in his voice, and, if anything, the dreamy spaced-out tone adds to the drama. No one has explored the pain of the song with more conviction or patience.

Ray takes the same drag-it-through-the-gutter approach to "Without A Song," a happy-go-lucky standard he gloriously and perversely transforms into a study in deep dark blue. Like his idol Art Tatum, he reviews the original through the mysterious lens of a very personal vision.

"I also picked up things from the past that I always wanted to do," he says. "I'd listened to Clyde McPhatter and liked his approach. Heard him do 'Without Love (There Is Nothing)' and thought the song might work for me. I'm the first to say I didn't sing it as good as Clyde, but I recorded it anyway. I don't think anyone minded.

"Other things sounded like blues to me dressed up in different outfits. Take 'The Brightest Smile In Town.' When it says, 'You took the brightest smile in town and turned it upside down,'⁴ that kills me. It's simple, but it's saying something. Don't have to be no Einstein to get it. The story sticks in your brain."

Ray employed the great arrangers of his day -- Quincy Jones, Marty Paich, Gerald Wilson (who charted, among many others, "Bye Bye, Love"), and Benny Carter. With his big band roots going back to McKinney's Cotton Pickers, Carter arranged "Busted" as well as "Smack Dab In The Middle," the song Ray had first heard by Joe Williams with Count Basie.

"Writing for Ray," says Carter, "is different. He basically has the song mapped out in his mind, so you're giving him what he wants. And the man knows exactly, note for note, what that is."

In contrast, "Makin' Whoopee" is wholly spontaneous, a wonderful souvenir salvaged from a mid-'60s concert. Ray has never recorded the song in a studio, and you can feel the sheer joy of his ad lib exploration both in his own heart and the hearts of the audience. He's funky, funny, and sly as a fox, exploiting the double entendres for all their worth. In the context of his simple trio, his storytelling chops have never been sharper.

In 1966, the freshly-formed songwriting team of Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson, who would later enjoy great success at Motown and eventual solo stardom of their own, brought Ray two songs, both blues variations and both brilliant. In an age when pot was the crop of growing preference, "Let's Go Get Stoned" offered just the right twist. "I Don't Need No Doctor" spoke with the same crying urgency. When it came to curing emotional ills, Ray had become the good doctor himself.

This is the same period when Ray's self-medication came to an end. His heroin habit had him at odds with the law, and, after several busts, he checked into a hospital and kicked, cold turkey. The year of his rehabilitation, 1965, is the only one in his five-decade career when he did not tour.

End of an Era

The rock rebellion that swept the pop world coincided with the Golden Age of Soul. Looking back at both movements -- the dominance of The Beatles and Stones and ascension of Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin -- it is clear that Ray Charles had become a beacon for both camps. Few would argue that he was the most influential voice of the past quarter-century. And just as Louis Armstrong had taught the world that the jazz aesthetic was applicable to any song, Ray showed that soul was every bit as universal. Legions of spirited white singers, from Steve Winwood to Joe Cocker to Rod Stewart, would build careers on the essential Ray Charles style. And he was equally as important in the world of black music. "Everyone at Motown idolized Ray," said Marvin Gaye. "He had both the commercial success and raw feeling we were all looking for. He was the man."

As the '60s grew more intense, as politics infused the music and protests hit the streets, Ray kept a steady course. His initial stylistic innovations -- his gospel-soul-jazz-country synthesis -- was an historical fact. Major innovations no longer interested him. But songs did. Songs always would.

"Like everyone else, I listened to The Beatles," he remembers. "At first they didn't kill me. But I saw soon they could write. Their ballads started speaking to me. Their ballads were serious. So I sang 'Eleanor Rigby,' and I sang 'Yesterday,' and I'm gonna keep singing them."

Film themes came Ray's way. One of the most popular was "In The Heat Of The Night," music by Quincy Jones, lyrics by the Bergmans.

"We cut it right here in my studio," Ray remembers, pointing to the back of his suite of offices where he lords over high-tech equipment and a recording room large enough to accommodate a big band and full complement of strings. "Quincy knows how to set the scene," says Ray, "His arrangements are visual, like you're watching the movie. Plus, the movie was about the South, and the South is a place I see very clearly."

Though not a commercial hit, one of Ray's artistic and sentimental triumphs from the '60s was a re-creation from the '40s. Asked if his rendition of Charles Brown's "Drifting Blues" -- actually his version combines two of Brown's blues, "Traveling" and "Drifting" -- is a tribute to one of his masters, Ray gets testy. "I'm doing it my own way," he snaps, "just the way Charles did it his way." After listening to the record, though, Ray relaxes a bit, even smiles. "Yes," he recants. "You might say every time I sing a song it's a tribute to the original singer."

Fascinating to hear how Ray, doing Charles Brown two decades later, can't help but fall back into a Charles Brown thick-molasses slur. It's automatic; it's also touching to experience Ray's extreme loyalties to his roots.

He continued revisiting standards, polishing gems like "Gee, Baby Ain't I Good To You" and "I Didn't Know What Time It Was." The studio is his playground, and his playfulness is the single quality that makes him most endearing. His spoken vamp at the end of Rodgers & Hart's "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" is a sudden and welcome variation on the time metaphor; this time, though, Ray turns the mood into the sexy blues of a man whose time is about to come.

Ray loves to talk and Ray loves to preach. His preaching comes out in the long spoken sections of "Understanding," where the rhythms of his rhetoric go with the grooves, while the imagery gets downright murderous. At this point in the '60s, Ray retained two staff writers, Jimmy Holliday and Jimmy Lewis, who contributed a number of songs to his repertoire. Holliday wrote "Understanding" and "Don't Change On Me." Lewis, who composed "We Can Make It," can be heard on his own "If It Wasn't For Bad Luck," singing comedy shtick with the boss.

"Booty Butt" is a rare Ray instrumental original selected from My Kind Of Jazz, one of a series of albums he made in the early '70s. In this case, Ray's kind of jazz is funky as the devil. "Came about one day when me and a tenor player in my band, Andy Ennis, were jamming in the studio," Ray explains. "Just fell into a thing. Called it 'Booty Butt' 'cause that's a nickname I like to call certain people."

Ray would always remain loyal to certain forms, namely blues. "When I hear a blues with a different spin, I zoom in," Ray explains. "That's what attracted me to 'Feel So Bad.' Little Milton did it first, and when I heard that line -- 'Feel so bad, like a ball game on a rainy day'⁵ -- I knew this song was gonna be good to me."

The Seventies and Beyond

Ray and Aretha -- an astounding moment in two astounding careers. The scene was the Fillmore West, the audience the flower children of San Francisco, the year 1971. It was Aretha's date; she had sung seven songs and driven the kids wild when she announced, adopting the Flip Wilson line, "I discovered Ray Charles." Her people fetched him from the audience and brought him to the stage.

"I was just minding my business," says Ray, "enjoying the show. I'm crazy for Aretha, she's my one true soul sister, and the last thing I wanted to do was sing. But when Aretha calls, you better answer."

Aretha generously gives her hit, "Spirit In The Dark," over to Ray, prompting him with the lyrics and letting him take the lead. The rhythm section, which includes Ray's former protégé Billy Preston on organ, Cornell Dupree on guitar, and Bernard Purdie on drums, is on fire; the Memphis horns are screaming; and, with Aretha's rock-steady support, Ray turns out the church. As he leaves the stage, Aretha does the anointing, calling him "The Right Reverend Ray...the Reverend Righteous Ray." Years later she adds, "What a night! I've never felt so much soul on one stage."

That same year Ray cut an album with a political theme, A Message From The People. In the age of dissent, the selections have something of an edge, but the big surprise -- and the enduring interpretation -- is "America The Beautiful." Asked whether it was his idea to sing the song, Ray replies, "Yes, darling, who else's idea would it be?" He goes on to tell the story: "Some of the verses were just too white for me, so I cut them out and sang the verses about the beauty of the country and the bravery of the soldiers. Then I put a little country church backbeat on it and turned it my way."

The result is another Ray Charles classic, another reformulated piece of Americana that he has sung hundreds of times since its initial release. Some hear irony in his interpretation, but Ray claims to be playing it straight. "I'm the first to say this country is racist to the bone," he states plainly, "but that doesn't mean I can't be patriotic. For all the bullshit about America, I still work and live here in comfort."

The irony in "Look What They've Done To My Song, Ma" is hard to deny. Originally a hit by Melanie, Ray infuses the story with his irresistible brand of enthusiasm and stop-and-stutter syncopation. "They've been fucking with my songs so long," says Ray, "I could really relate to the words. Naturally I've been redoing other people's songs too, just like I redid this one. Part of it was supposed to be in French, for example, but when I messed up the pronunciation, I kept on going. Didn't care. Figured it was all for the sake of fun."

The fact that, for all his musical seriousness, Ray doesn't have to take himself all that seriously is another saving grace. He turns "Look What They've Done To My Song, Ma" into grand entertainment.

Like Message To The People, Through The Eyes Of Love was released on Ray's own Tangerine Records, with ABC distributing. (The tangerine is his favorite fruit.) At this point, his record sales had dramatically decreased, though his output stayed steady.

"I love having hits," he says, "'cause I love making money. I love knowing people are loving my music. But as long as I got breath in me and bread to pay the electric bill, I will go in there and record, whether one person buys the record or one million."

"I Can Make It Thru The Days (But Oh Those Lonely Nights)" was written by Ray, Ray's longtime friend Ruth Robinson, and Dee Ervin, both of whom worked for Ray's publishing company in the '70s. It's another new twist on the blues. Blues ballads have always been Ray's strength, and the one he borrowed from Brook Benton, Tony Joe White's "Rainy Night In Georgia," is remarkable, not only for Ray's emotional savagery, but the wit of his spoken vamp in which he plays the part of a sloppy drunk. Who says singers aren't actors?

By 1974 Ray was releasing albums on his own, and had renamed his label Crossover Records, after his marketing goal. The major album of this period was Renaissance; its centerpiece was Ray's reading of Stevie Wonder's "Living For The City."

"Stevie and I go back a long ways," Ray reflects. "They brought him to me before he even got on Motown. He came backstage and sang and blew his harmonica and, man, I knew right then. So I've been knowing Stevie through the years. He's a gadget man, and he's always bringing me new machines, like the voice-activated book reader. I've admired his songs ever since he started writing, but "Living For The City" was the first that felt right for me. I do it differently than Stevie; I cut out a lot of the musical flourishes and I put in that long rap in the middle, talkin' 'bout the rats and roaches."

Ray refers to his monologue on the woes of financial depravity, another instance of how, as in "Rainy Night In Georgia," he juxtaposes his speaking and singing voices as a storytelling device.

The story of Ray's career for the last 20 years has been consistency. Proof of the consistently high level of his live performances are two cuts from a 1975 concert in Tokyo. Never before released on compact disc and unavailable in the United States in any format, "Till There Was You" and "Am I Blue" are special bonuses in this collection.

On that night in November, Brother Ray was in rare form. He tears apart "Till There Was You" and puts it back together with the passion of an epic poet. Towards the end, after giving you everything he's got, you can hear him cry. "Am I Blue," which he first recorded on the Atlantic Genius album in 1959, FEATUREs a dialogue with one of his most creative sidemen, the great trumpeter Johnny Coles. When Coles hits his opening notes and Ray says, "Explain it," and then, "Yeah, baby," you feel the mysterious closeness between the two musical sensibilities. As their conversation deepens, your heartbeat quickens.

In 1977 Ray returned to Atlantic for a series of albums that, fitting his usual mold, were self-produced in his L.A. studio. The selection, the engineering, the mix, the entire process was, as it had been for decades and will be forever, controlled by Ray. Each album contains a gem or two.

From True To Life, "How Long Has This Been Going On" is a virtual reinvention of the immortal Gershwin brothers song; Ray is in magnificent form and Larry Muhoberac's brass lines has Mr. C bouncing off the walls. "The Jealous Kind" has him hooting and hollering with his peculiar brand of emotional agony and ecstasy. "Is There Anyone Out There?," taken from Love And Peace, is unusual thematically; Ray bemoans the absence not of romance, but simple friendship. From Ain't It So, "One Of These Days" answers the trivia question: Name the Barry Manilow tune recorded by Ray Charles. Ray negotiates Manilow's subtle melody with enormous sensitivity. And from Brother Ray Is At It Again, he turns in a masterful rendition of Bruce Roberts and Carole Bayer Sager's "Don't You Love Me Anymore?" The heartbreakingly beautiful trumpet solo is by Bobby Bryant.

In the '80s Ray switched gears by signing with CBS Nashville and producer Billy Sherrill. "When I first sang country music in the '60s," says Ray, "I had lots of string and a chorus of singers. This time I wanted to do more downhome country, with the real Nashville cats in the studio. Wanted to hear those crying steel guitars. Was looking for a purer approach."

Friendship, an album of duets, is the highlight of this series, and the pairing with Willie Nelson, "Seven Spanish Angels," Ray's first major hit in over a decade. "Went down to Willie's ranch in Texas," Ray remembers, "and cut it right there in his studio. Singing with Willie is just as easy as talking with Willie. Hung out for a couple of days, just to play chess with Willie. If he'll only admit I'm the better chess player, we'd be all right."

Brother Ray also duets with George Jones ("We Didn't See A Thing") and Hank Williams, Jr., ("Two Old Cats Like Us").

Ray has a knack for high visibility, no matter what his chart action. He sang "Shake Your TailFeather," the James and Bobby Purify hit, in the Blues Brothers film; he recorded "I'll Be Good To You," a Johnson Brothers hit from an earlier era, as a Quincy Jones-produced duet with Chaka Khan. Billy Vera, who coproduced "That's Where It's At," Ray's duet with Lou Rawls, tells the story of that session:

"We went over to Ray's studio and played him the track. Fathead had previously recorded a solo that Ray liked, but Ray thought it should come a verse earlier. 'I'll splice it together,' Ray said. Well, he took out a razor and, right then and there, started splicing the 2-inch master tape. I can see, and I still wouldn't dare cut up a master. We held our breath while Ray jumped on the job. The result was absolute perfection. He didn't drop a stitch."

In 1992 Mo Ostin lured Ray to Warner Records where A&R man Benny Medina put him together with producer Richard Perry. The Perry/Charles relationship was rocky, but two of their efforts, Leon Russell's "A Song For You" and Paul Simon's "Still Crazy After All These Years," were unqualified successes.

"I'd been loving 'A Song For You' since I heard Donny Hathaway sing it back in the '70s," says Ray. "Donny had so much soul. 'Still Crazy' fit me fine, especially the part that says, 'I'm not the kind of man who tends to socialize/ I seem to lean on old familiar ways.'⁶ That's me."

Ray goes back to listen to "Still Crazy After All These Years" one last time. "I really relate," he laughs. "I'm happy not to change, happy to be crazy in the same ways I've always been crazy."

"Imagine" is a product of Ray's recent work with producer Jean-Pierre Grosz. Improbably, Ray was not familiar with the John Lennon anthem to idealism that had been licensed, even more improbably, for commercials by a leading French bank. "The bank wanted Ray to sing only a snippet of the song, but I insisted he do a complete version," says Jean-Pierre, Ray's closest musical collaborator these days. "I commissioned five different arrangements, which I brought to Ray in Germany. He picked his favorite. Then, by blessed coincidence, the Harlem Gospel Choir happened to be performing in Paris. I rushed them into the studio to sing those beautiful backgrounds. Ray sang final vocals, his own melange of gospel and blues, in Los Angeles and, I do believe, John Lennon's legacy is well served." Amen.

Ray is a man of absolute routine; his life is a matter of touring and recording. He has done so for nearly 50 years and, in his own words, "I'll be doing it till I drop." Today has been different. Today he willingly answered questions, listened to old recordings, and reflected on his past. Now he has tired of doing so. "Not that I don't like my old records," he says. "I already told you that I love me. That means that I love my music. But the music I love the most is the music I'm in the middle of doing. See, I gotta get back there to the studio."

In the rear of his building, Ray's studio, were it not equipped with a state-of-the-art 48-track board, could compete with Sun Studio in Memphis or the West Grand Motown studio in Detroit as a monument of recording history. It feels like living history. The decor is absolutely plain; the vibe is early '60s. The small room on the engineering side of the glass, where Ray has spent God only knows how many hours for the past 35 years, is charged with his electricity. He loves the mechanics of his music as much as the soul of his songs. He starts turning switches, pushing buttons, adjusting levels. He plays some recent stuff, songs he's just performed at a Ferragamo fashion show in Milan, songs he's preparing for a new record -- R&B songs, country songs, standards he wants to include on a jazz album he's been planning for years.

"So you see," he says, indicating it's time for you to leave, time for him to get back to doing what he does best, "I've still got a lifetime of music ahead of me."

-- David Ritz
David Ritz cowrote Brother Ray with Ray Charles in addition to biographies of B.B. King, Marvin Gaye, Etta James, Smokey Robinson, and Jerry Wexler. Ritz is currently working with Aretha Franklin on her life story. His novels include Passion Flowers; his lyrics include "Sexual Healing."

1 "I'VE GOT NEWS FOR YOU"
© 1947. Renewed 1975 Almo Music Corp. (ASCAP)
All rights reserved. Used by permission.

2 "BORN TO LOSE"
© 1943 by Peer International Corporation.
All rights reserved. Used by permission.

3 "BUSTED"
© 1962 Sony/ATV Songs LLC
All rights reserved. Used by permission.

4 "THE BRIGHTEST SMILE IN TOWN"
Words & Music by Barry DeVorzon, Bob Sherman & Ray Charles
© 1963 Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. (BMI)
All rights reserved. Used by permission.

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