http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040610/D834E06O0.html
Ray Charles, a transcendent talent who erased musical boundaries
between the sacred and the secular with hits such as "What'd I
Say,""Georgia on My Mind" and "I Can't Stop Loving You," died
Thursday. He was 73.
Charles died of acute liver disease at his Beverly Hills home at 11:35
a.m., surrounded by family and friends, said spokesman Jerry Digney.
Blind by age 7 and an orphan at 15, the gifted pianist and saxophonist
spent his life shattering any notion of musical categories and defying
easy definition. One of the first artists to record the "blasphemous
idea of taking gospel songs and putting the devil's words to them," as
legendary producer Jerry Wexler once said, Charles' music spanned
soul, rock 'n' roll, R&B, country, jazz, big band and blues.
He put his stamp on it all with a deep, warm voice roughened by
heartbreak from a hardscrabble childhood in the segregated South.
Smiling and swaying behind the piano, grunts and moans peppering his
songs, Charles' appeal spanned generations.
His health deteriorated rapidly over the past year, after he had hip
replacement surgery and was diagnosed with a failing liver. The Grammy
winner's last public appearance was alongside Clint Eastwood on April
30, when the city of Los Angeles designated the singer's studios,
built 40 years ago, as a historic landmark.
Aretha Franklin called Charles "the voice of a lifetime."
"He was a fabulous man, full of humor and wit," she said in a
statement. "A giant of an artist, and of course, he introduced the
world to secular soul singing."
"People remember the big hits and the visual image of him, but they
forget what an innovator he was in the 1950s as a jazz musician," said
country music singer Marty Stuart. "He made inroads for all of us when
he did 'I Can't Stop Loving You.' It took country music to places it
hadn't been before."
"I lost one of my best friends and I will miss him a lot," Willie
Nelson said in a statement. "Last month or so, we got together and
recorded 'It Was a Very Good Year,' by Frank Sinatra. It was great
hanging out with him for a day."
Charles won nine of his 12 Grammy Awards between 1960 and 1966,
including the best R&B recording three consecutive years ("Hit the
Road Jack,""I Can't Stop Loving You" and "Busted").
His versions of other songs are also well known, including "Makin'
Whoopee" and a stirring "America the Beautiful." Hoagy Carmichael and
Stuart Gorrell wrote "Georgia on My Mind" in 1931, but it didn't
become Georgia's official state song until 1979, long after Charles
turned it into an American standard.
"I was born with music inside me. That's the only explanation I know
of," Charles said in his 1978 autobiography, "Brother Ray."
Charles considered Martin Luther King Jr. a friend and once refused to
play to segregated audiences in South Africa. But politics didn't
take.
He was happiest playing music, teaming with such disparate musicians
as Chaka Khan and Eric Clapton. Pepsi tapped him for TV spots around a
powerfully simple "uh huh" theme, and he appeared in movies including
"The Blues Brothers."
"The way I see it, we're actors, but musical ones," he once told The
Associated Press. "We're doing it with notes, and lyrics with notes,
telling a story. I can take an audience and get 'em into a frenzy so
they'll almost riot, and yet I can sit there so you can almost hear a
pin drop."
Charles was no angel. His womanizing was legendary, and he struggled
with a heroin addiction for nearly 20 years before quitting cold
turkey in 1965 after an arrest at the Boston airport. Yet there was a
sense of humor about even that - he released both "I Don't Need No
Doctor" and "Let's Go Get Stoned" in 1966.
He later became reluctant to talk about the drug use, fearing it would
taint how people thought of his work.
"I've known times where I've felt terrible, but once I get to the
stage and the band starts with the music, I don't know why but it's
like you have pain and take an aspirin, and you don't feel it no
more," he once said.
Said John Burk, who worked recently with Charles as producer of the
upcoming duets album "Genius Loves Company": "There were a couple of
times where he would say, 'I'm not feeling well today but I'll take a
stab at it ... I can come back to it later.' And he never had to come
back to it later."
He said Charles' gift was "finding and communicating the human emotion
in a song. ... That's what we strive for in the recording process, is
to find that human experience."
Ray Charles Robinson was born Sept. 23, 1930, in Albany, Ga. His
father, Bailey Robinson, was a mechanic and a handyman, and his
mother, Aretha, stacked boards in a sawmill. His family moved to
Greenville, Fla., when Charles was an infant.
"Talk about poor," Charles once said. "We were on the bottom of the
ladder."
Charles saw his brother drown in his mothers' laundry tub when he was
about 5 as the family struggled through the Depression. His sight was
gone two years later. Glaucoma is often mentioned as a cause, though
Charles said nothing was ever diagnosed.
After he was sent away, heartbroken, to the state-supported St.
Augustine School for the Deaf and the Blind, Charles learned to read
and write music in Braille, score for big bands and play instruments -
lots of them, including trumpet, clarinet, organ, alto sax and the
piano.
His early influences were myriad: Chopin and Sibelius, the Grand Ole
Opry, the powerhouse big bands of Duke Ellington and Count Basie, jazz
greats Art Tatum and Artie Shaw.
By the time he was 15 his parents were dead and Charles had graduated
from St. Augustine. He wound up playing gigs in black dance halls -
the so-called chitlin' circuit - and exposed himself to a variety of
music, including hillbilly (he learned to yodel) before moving to
Seattle.
He dropped his last name in deference to boxer Sugar Ray Robinson,
patterned himself for a time after Nat "King" Cole and formed a group
that backed rhythm 'n' blues singer Ruth Brown. It was in Seattle's
red light district were he met a young Quincy Jones, showing the
future producer and composer how to write music. It was the beginning
of a lifelong friendship.
Charles developed quickly in those early days. Atlantic Records
purchased his contract from Swingtime Records in 1952, and two years
later he recorded "I Got a Woman," a raw mixture of gospel and R&B,
pioneering what came to be called soul. Soon, he was being called "The
Genius" and was playing at Carnegie Hall and the Newport Jazz
Festival.
His first big hit was 1959's "What'd I Say," a song built off a simple
piano riff with suggestive moaning from the Raeletts. It was banned by
some radio stations.
Producer Wexler, who recorded "What'd I Say," said he has worked with
only three geniuses in the music business: Franklin, Bob Dylan and
Charles.
"In each case they brought something new to the table," Wexler told
the San Jose Mercury News in 1994. Charles "had this blasphemous idea
of taking gospel songs and putting the devil's words to them."
Charles played "America" for Ronald and Nancy Reagan in 1985 at an
inauguration ball, and was one of the legends receiving Kennedy Center
Honors in 1986.
His last Grammy came in 1993 for "A Song for You," but he never
dropped out of the music scene. He continued to tour and long
treasured time for chess. He once told the Los Angeles Times: "I'm not
Spassky, but I'll make it interesting for you."
Charles, who was divorced twice and single since 1952, was survived by
12 children, 20 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. A memorial
service was planned for next week at Los Angeles' First AME Church,
with burial afterward at Inglewood Cemetery.
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