People who shrug off Ray Charles are probably the same people who go to see Casablanca or The Godfather and laugh because these films have so many cliches in them. They don’t understand that they’re the originals.
Before Ray Charles, there was no soul music. Zilch. None.
In the mid-1950’s Ray Charles combined gospel music with R&B in the song “I Gotta Woman.” Nobody had heard anything like it. And I don’t remember listening to a lot of pop Black singers before him. He invented a genre and appealed to just about everybody under the age of 50 at the time.
During the winter of my senior year in high school, this man with a kind of dusty sad voice sang about a woman named Ruby. The song was full of sleeplessness and absence and questions. And even though I was still safe at home in a small Southern town and didn’t even know anyone named Ruby, *I knew that song marked a passage into adult feelings for me.
“Georgia on My Mind” was by the same man who wrote “Stardust.” It was nice, but not really special until RC recorded it and people got homesick for a place they’d never been and for moonlight through the pines.
Something similar happened with “America the Beautiful.” I think that it was at the end of the Olympic Games in about 1980 that I heard him sing his version for the first time. It took my breath away. It was like I’d never heard those words before.
Jamie Fox will probably get the Oscar for Ray. It’s not as if the movie was thrown together after Ray’s passing. Those who watched RC for the last 45 years know his moves – the way he held his head, the angle at which he pounded rhythm with his right foot, how he bounced his behind about an inch and a half off the piano bench, the half swagger, half strut – and the voice and laughter too. Those are the things a fan memorizes without even thinking about it. While I was watching the movie, I could relax and forget for long periods of time that Jamie wasn’t Ray.
Ray Charles did record on his last album. It wasn’t all old recordings. There is film footage of him right to the last. His career lasted half a century and he influenced everyone from Presley to the Beatles to country musicians to every soul singer that is. He was dazzlingly good at entertaining people.
It’s been about ten years since I saw Ray Charles in concert on Valentine’s Day. He was fading, but he was still so fine. We were on the aisle a few rows from the front. See that girl with the red dress on? That was me! 
I know it gets tiresome to hear older people say that “you just had to be there.” Honest, I thought that everybody was still turned on to Ray! The man practically invented the word cool.. If you ever decide to give him a try, make sure that you get something that has most of his hits on it. Be sure it has What’d I Say? for when you’re feeling good and “Georgia on My Mind” for when you’re alone, but not too sad.
Thank you for indulging me.
