So Long, Brother Ray

By BARRY BLITZER Palisadian-Post columnist

We’ll miss you, Ray Charles. Ask B. B. King, Willie Nelson, The Rev. Jesse Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Wynton Marsalis and the thousands of other devoted fans, black and white, who paid homage to you last Friday at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown L.A. ”When it came to jazz, R&B, country and pop, you were the main man for 73 awesome years. Talk about a string of hits, like ‘Georgia On My Mind,’ ‘Hit The Road, Jack,’ ‘What’d I Say?’ And who but Ray could turn the traditional ‘America The Beautiful’ into an unforgettable, soul-stirring blend of gospel and blues? ”Born in Georgia during the Depression, then raised in the black ghettos of Florida, he described his childhood poverty thusly: ‘Compared to other blacks, we were at the bottom of the barrel looking up at everyone else. Nothin’ below us except the ground.’ ”Afflicted with glaucoma since the age of 5, totally blind by 7, Ray found his luck finally changing for the better when he was sent to a state school for deaf and blind and where he first took up the piano, eventually overcoming his loss of sight by learning to read and compose music using Braille notes. ”Orphaned at 15, he hit the road playing and singing in bands that would gladly appear in tobacco barns or juke joints for the price of a meal. His nomadic life finally improved when he moved to Seattle and hooked up with the then teenaged Quincy Jones, a budding musical prodigy who became Ray’s long-time collaborator and friend. ”As Brother Ray would later admit about himself, he was a tough leader, a hard-to- please perfectionist who toured the world over, some 50 weeks per year. (He apparently took time off to marry five times and father 12 children.) Ray loved winning, whether it be by the number of hit recordings on the charts or by beating the pants off his perplexed opponents at both chess and cards. B. B. King claims that he often cheated at the latter by stacking the Braille deck. Trouble was it was hard to catch him in the dark. ”My daughter Amy had just turned 24 when my wife Elsie and I surprised her by taking her to see Ray Charles in person. It was a balmy afternoon concert at a scruffy park in Pasadena. His back-up band consisted of several well-known studio musicians, one of whom hit a clinker on the opening number, ‘The Right Time,’ which caused Ray’s trademark smile to fade to a visible grimace. He subsequently hit the right note on the piano, then resumed smiling and bobbing his head from side to side in time to the vocal’a born showman if there ever was one. ”All too soon the concert was over. Ray, still smiling and bobbing to the thunderous applause and shouts for an encore, looked bushed as he was escorted off stage by an aide, while a P.A. announcer boomed: ‘Let’s hear it for the one, the only, the legendary Ray Charles!’ That says it all. ”Bye, Bye, Ray.