RAY CHARLES

Unchain My Heart

"I knew being blind was suddenly an aid. I never stop at the skin. If I looked at a man or a woman, I wanted to see inside. Being distracted by shading or coloring is stupid. It gets in the way. It's something I just can't see." Ray Charles

Nor is it something any of us really need to see, if only we could do away with the 'shading and color'-coding in our visual world, the world could but something better. We all could learn a thing or two from Ray Charles.

Man Of Action

At a concert in Augusta, GA he took a stand against the well-established segregation of the time. The music promoter had insisted that the show be segregated with white audience on the floor and the black audience upstairs. Ray replied, "I told the promoter that I didn't mind segregation, except that he had it backwards…After all, I was black and it only made sense to have the black folk close to me…Let him sue. I wasn't going to play. And I didn't. And he sued. And I lost."

Serving The King

As far as being out in the front lines of activism, when asked to by Martin Luther King, Ray had to decline. He didn't think he could put himself out their physically, "I wouldn't have known when to duck when they started throwing broken bottles at my head." Instead Ray pointed his attention at raising money to support the efforts. Cause as he put it, "when you break the law, you're going to need money for lawyers, legal research, court fees and food for the marchers."

Visual Music

Ray Charles Robinson was not born blind, he started to go blind when he was four and three years later at the age of seven was when he finally lost his sight altogether. Even though, he had memories of a vivid visual world and the face of the most important person in his life, his mother, Aretha Robinson.

St. Augustine

St. Augustine was the Florida state school for the deaf and blind and Ray was accepted there as a charity student. It was there that he learned to type and read Braille. He also became a skilled basket weaver and developed his great gift and love of music. Most importantly it was there that he discovered mathematics and its correlation to music. Based on these new found principles he was able to arrange music in his head, telling out the parts, one by one.

Hit The Road Jack

Seattle, Washington? How in the sam hill does a blind musician making his living imitating the likes of Nat King Cole in Florida, make his way all the way to far reaches of Seattle, Washington. Well, when Ray knew it was time for him to head on, he asked a friend to help him find the farthest point from Florida on a US map and so Seattle became his new destination.

Little Fish Big Fish Swimming In The Water

A fish out of water, Ray arrived in Seattle with no connections, yet was able to rise to the status of a minor celebrity in the club scene. He met the young Quincy Jones during his stint there, whom he took under his wing and setting the stage for beginning of two powerful musicians.

A Song For You

Ray received his 12th Grammy in 1994. This go around it was for, "the Best R&B Vocal by a Male Performer" for his song, "A Song For You", form his album, "My World". When questioned on MTV's Town Hall Meeting, President Bill Clinton sited this song as his favorite. Ray Charles received the National Medal of Arts from Bill Clinton in 1993. Earlier that year, he had performed in a pre-inaugural concert for Clinton, which was produced by his long time friend, Quincy Jones.

A Man For All Seasons

Pepsi signed on Ray Charles as pitchman for the soft drink in 1990 after their research showed, "his appeal crosses age boundaries like few other performers." The first ad of the campaign was deemed "the best commercial in the world" and earned Ray an Advertising Age award as its Star Performer of 1990 and won him a Clio Award as Best Male Performer.

Israel

"Even though I'm not Jewish and even though I'm stingy with my bread, Israel is one of the few causes I feel good about supporting. Blacks and Jews are hooked up and bound together by a common history of persecution. If someone besides a black ever sings the real gut bucket blues, it'll be a Jew. We both know what it's like to be someone else's footstool." Not long before Ben-Gurion died, Ray spent many hours with the Israel leader during a tour of that country. He also received an award from the Beverly Hills Lodge of B-nai Brith's tribute to him as "Man of the Year" in 1976.

Like A Foxx

During the filming of the 2004 film, Unchain My Heart: The Ray Charles Story, actor Jamie Foxx wore eye prosthetics which effectively rendered him blind for the 14 hours of shooting each day. And when you saw him playing a piano in a scene, it was actually Jamie twinkling the keys. Ray Charles was able to sit through a first edit of the film before he died of liver failure on June 10th, 2004.

Universal Appeal

Director Taylor Hackford secured the rights to make the film way back in 1987, but no studio was interested in backing the film, so it had to be shot and financed independently and once it was completed it was picked up by Universal Studios. Part of the reason Universal released the film was one of the executives involved in the deal used to hitchhike to Hollywood to watch Ray Charles perform. If you took the Universal Studios tour last summer you would have seen the Ray Charles banner displayed on the side of studio 44. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards and won two of them, one for Best Achievement in Sound and the other for Best Actor.

Capturing The Soul

As Thomas Thompson put it in his 1966 profile on Ray Charles, "…his niche is difficult to define. The best blues singer around? Of course, but don't stop there. He is also an unparalleled singer of jazz, of gospel of country and western. He had drawn from each of these musical streams and made a river which he alone can navigate."