[Dixielandjazz] Ray Charles NY TIMES OBIT

[Stephen Barbone]

Here is the definitive Obit of Ray Charles among those I've seen.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

June 11, 2004 - NY TIMES

Ray Charles, Bluesy Essence of Soul, Is Dead at 73

By JON PARELES and BERNARD WEINRAUB

       Ray Charles, the piano man with the bluesy voice who reshaped
American music for a half-century, bringing the essence of soul to
country, jazz, rock, standards and every other style of music he
touched, died yesterday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 73.

Mr. Charles underwent successful hip replacement surgery last year and
had been scheduled to start a concert tour this month, but developed
other ailments and died of complications of liver disease, said his
publicity agent, Jerry Digney.

Mr. Charles brought his influence to bear as a performer, songwriter,
bandleader and producer. Though blind since childhood, he was a
remarkable pianist, at home with splashy barrelhouse playing and
precisely understated swing. But his playing was inevitably overshadowed
by his voice, a forthright baritone steeped in the blues, strong and
impure and gloriously unpredictable.

He could belt like a blues shouter and croon like a pop singer, and he
used the flaws and breaks in his voice to illuminate emotional
paradoxes. Even in his early years he sounded like a voice of
experience, someone who had seen all the hopes and follies of humanity.

Leaping into falsetto, stretching a word and then breaking it off with a
laugh or a sob, slipping into an intimate whisper and then letting loose
a whoop, Mr. Charles could sound suave or raw, brash or hesitant, joyful
or desolate, insouciant or tearful, earthy or devout. He projected the
primal exuberance of a field holler and the sophistication of a
bebopper; he could conjure exaltation, sorrow and determination within a
single phrase.

In the 1950's Mr. Charles became an architect of soul music by bringing
the fervor and dynamics of gospel to secular subjects. But he soon broke
through any categories. By singing any song he prized — from "Hallelujah
I Love Her So" to "I Can't Stop Loving You" to "Georgia on My Mind" to
"America the
Beautiful" — Mr. Charles claimed all of American music as his
birthright. He made more than 60 albums, and his influence echoes
through generations of rock and soul singers.

Joe Levy, the music editor of Rolling Stone, said, "The hit records he
made for Atlantic in the mid-50's mapped out everything that would
happen to rock 'n' roll and soul music in the years that followed."

"Ray Charles is the guy who combined the sacred and the secular, he
combined gospel music and the blues," Mr. Levy continued, adding, "He's
called a genius because no one could confine him to one genre. He wasn't
just rhythm and blues. He was jazz as well. In the early 60's he turned
himself into a country performer. Except for B. B. King, there's no
other figure who's been as important or has endured so long."

In an interview with The New York Times earlier this year, after being
sidelined by surgery for months, Mr. Charles reflected on his career and
seemed eager to be in front of an audience again.

"Yes, I'm going to keep touring, keep performing, it's in my blood," he
said in a recording studio in Los Angeles. "I'm like Count Basie or Duke
Ellington. Until the good Lord calls my number, that's what I'm going to
do." Several weeks after that interview he canceled a March 2 appearance
at Alice Tully Hall in Manhattan because of postsurgery discomfort.

"I ain't going to live forever," he said during the recording studio
interview. "I got enough sense to know that. I also know it's not a
question of how long I live, but it's a question of how well I live."

He had recently recorded an album of duets with such performers as Norah
Jones, B. B. King, Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, Michael McDonald and
James Taylor that was planned for an August release. A movie,
tentatively titled "Unchain My Heart: The Ray Charles Story," starring
Jamie Foxx and directed by Taylor Hackford, has been completed, but its
producers say they are uncertain if it will be released this year or
next.

Mr. Charles influenced singers as varied as Elvis Presley, Aretha
Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Van Morrison and Billy Joel. But he started out
being influenced by a very different singer, Nat King Cole.

"When I started out I tried to imitate Nat Cole because I loved him so
much," Mr. Charles said. "But then I woke up one morning and I said,
`People tell me all the time that I sound like Nat Cole, but wait a
minute, they don't even know my name.' As scared as I was — because I
got jobs sounding like Nat Cole — I just said, `Well, I've got to change
because nobody knows who I am.' And my Mom taught me one thing, `Be
yourself, boy.' And that's the premise I went on."

Ray Charles Robinson was born on Sept. 23, 1930, in Albany, Ga., a small
town, and grew up in an even smaller town, Greenville, Fla. When he was
5 he began losing his sight from an unknown ailment that may have been
glaucoma. He became completely blind by the time he was 7. But he began
to learn piano, at first from a local boogie-woogie pianist, Wylie
Pitman; he also soaked up gospel music at the Shiloh Baptist Church and
rural blues from musicians including Tampa Red.

He would say years later that racism in the South affected him just as
it had any other black person.

"What I never understood to this day, to this very day, was how white
people could have black people cook for them, make their meals, but
wouldn't let them sit at the table with them," he said. "How can you
dislike someone so much and have them cook for you? Shoot, if I don't
like someone you ain't cooking nothing for me, ever."

He attended the St. Augustine School for the Deaf and the Blind from
1937 to 1945. There he learned to repair radios and cars, and he started
formal piano lessons. He learned to write music in Braille and played
Chopin and Art Tatum; he also learned to play clarinet, alto saxophone,
trumpet and organ. On the radio he listened to swing bands,
country-and-western singers and gospel quartets. "My ears were sponges,
soaked it all up," he told David Ritz, who collaborated on his 1978
autobiography, "Brother Ray."

Asked recently what effect blindness had had on his career, Mr. Charles
replied: "Nothing, nothing, nothing. I was going to do what I was going
to do anyway. I played music since I was 3. I could see then. I lost my
sight when I was 7. So blindness didn't have anything to do with it. It
didn't give me anything. And it didn't take nothing."

He left school at 15, after his mother died, and went to Jacksonville,
Fla., to earn a living as a musician. He played where he could as a
sideman or a solo act, taking jobs all over the state and calling
himself Ray Charles to distinguish himself from the boxer Sugar Ray
Robinson. He modeled himself on two urbane pianists and singers, not
just Cole, but also Charles Brown, carefully copying their hits and
imitating their inflections.

After three years, he put Florida far behind him and moved to Seattle.
There he formed the McSon Trio, named after its guitarist, Gosady McGee,
and the "son" from Robinson. He also started an addiction to heroin that
lasted 17 years.

Mr. Charles made his first single, "Confession Blues," in Seattle in
1949, credited to the Maxin (a different spelling of McSon) Trio. His
second single, "Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand" by the Ray Charles Trio, was
recorded in Los Angeles in 1950 with musicians who had played with Cole.
The singles were hits on the "race records" (later rhythm-and-blues)
charts, and Mr. Charles moved to Los Angeles.

He joined the band led by the blues guitarist Lowell Fulson, and became
its musical director. After two years touring the United States, he left
to resume his own career. In 1953 he signed to Atlantic Records; he also
moved to New Orleans to work with Guitar Slim as pianist and arranger.
Guitar Slim's "Things That I Used to Do," featuring Mr. Charles on
piano, became a million-selling single in 1954, and that convinced Mr.
Charles to abandon his imitative style and free his own voice. He moved
to Dallas and formed a band featuring the Texas saxophonist David
(Fathead) Newman. After working with studio bands on his first Atlantic
singles, he convinced that label to let him record with his touring
band, playing arrangements that had been road-tested on the
rhythm-and-blues circuit.

"I've Got a Woman," recorded in a radio-station studio in Atlanta with
his seven-piece band, became Mr. Charles's first national hit in 1955,
starting a string of bluesy, gospel-charged hits, among them "A Fool for
You," "Drown in My Own Tears" and "Hallelujah I Love Her So." In the
mid-1950's he expanded his band to include the Raelettes, female backup
singers who provided responses like a gospel choir, and they became a
permanent part of his music. It was the beginning of the rock 'n' roll
era, but Mr. Charles's songs were not geared to teenagers; they had the
adult concerns of the blues. Nonetheless, his songs began showing up on
the pop charts as well as on the rhythm-and-blues charts.

At the same time Mr. Charles made clear his allegiance to jazz,
recording an album with Milt Jackson of the Modern Jazz Quartet in 1958
and appearing at the Newport Jazz Festival.

In 1959 a late-night jam session turned into "What'd I Say." It was a
blues with an electric-piano riff, a quasi-Latin beat and cheerful
come-ons that gave way to wordless call-and-response moans. Although
some radio stations banned it, it became a Top 10 pop hit and sold a
million copies. But his next album, "The Genius of Ray Charles," took a
different tack: half of it was recorded with a lush string orchestra,
half with a big band. He also recorded his first country song, a version
of Hank Snow's "I'm Movin' On."

Mr. Charles left Atlantic for ABC-Paramount Records in 1959 when it
offered him higher royalties and ownership of his master recordings. He
began to reach a larger pop audience with songs including two No. 1
hits, his version of "Georgia on My Mind" in 1960 (one of his first
songs to win a Grammy) and "Hit the Road Jack" in 1961. With increasing
royalties and touring fees, Mr. Charles expanded his group to become a
big band.

By the early 1960's Mr. Charles had virtually given up writing his own
material to follow his eclectic impulses as an interpreter. He made an
instrumental jazz album, "Genius + Soul = Jazz," playing Hammond organ
with a big band featuring Count Basie sidemen. On a duet album he made
in 1961 with the jazz singer Betty Carter, two highly idiosyncratic
voices sounded utterly compatible. And in 1962 he released the album
"Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music," remaking country songs as
big-band ballads. His version of "I Can't Stop Loving You" reached No. 1
and sold a million copies.

After recording "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Vol. 2,"
Mr. Charles settled into an office building and studio in Los Angeles
that remained his headquarters ever since. He returned to rhythm and
blues for his other major 1960's hits: "Busted" in 1963 and "Let's Go
Get Stoned" in 1966. But he was also recording standards, country songs
and show tunes.

In 1965 Mr. Charles was arrested for possession of heroin. He spent time
in a California sanatorium to shake his addiction and stopped performing
for a year, the only break during his long career. When he emerged he
resumed his old schedule: touring for up to 10 months with the big band
and releasing an album or two every year. He started his own label,
Tangerine, which released albums through ABC and on its own. In the
mid-1970's he started another label, Crossover, which released albums
through Atlantic.

His presence on the pop charts had dwindled, but he was still widely
respected. In 1971 he joined Aretha Franklin for the concert she
recorded as "Aretha Live at Fillmore West." His version of Stevie
Wonder's "Living for the City" won a Grammy in 1975. His autobiography
became a best seller in 1978. In 1979 his version of "Georgia on My
Mind" was named the official state song of Georgia, and in 1980 he
appeared in the movie "The Blues Brothers."

During the 1980's Mr. Charles returned to the charts, this time in the
country category. The boundary-crossing Southern music he had envisioned
with "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music" had been not just
accepted, but treated as natural. He signed to CBS Records's Nashville
division and made "Friendship," an album of duets with 10 country stars,
which included songs with George Jones and Willie Nelson that reached
the country Top 10 in 1983. He sang "America the Beautiful" at the
Republican National Convention in 1984.

In 1986 Mr. Charles was one of the first musicians inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He received a Grammy for Lifetime
Achievement in 1987, and in 1989 he appeared on Quincy Jones's album
"Back on the Block," winning another Grammy in 1990 for a vocal duet
with Chaka Khan on "I'll Be Good to You." All in all he won a dozen
Grammys for his recordings, as well as the achievement award. Also in
1990 he turned up in television ads for Diet Pepsi, singing, "You got
the right one, baby, uh-huh!"

Mr. Charles's private life was complicated. He was divorced twice, and
leaves behind 12 children, 20 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren.

Among his numerous awards were the Presidential Medal for the Arts, in
1993, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 1986.

In the interview earlier this year, Mr. Charles said that, having aged,
he could sing only music that moved him in a way that he could not quite
define.

"I guess I'm kind of a strange animal," he said. "What works for me is
songs that I can put myself into. It has nothing to do with the song.
Maybe it's a great song. But there's got to be something in that song
for me."

Asked if most of his songs were not suffused with sadness, he shrugged
and said: "To be honest with you, I sing what I feel, what I genuinely
feel. That's it. No airs."