Books: Reviews and Opinion SOUL SURVIVOR Uh-huh: Defying odds, Ray
Charles became legend with his trademark blend of blues and jazz,
breaking the color barrier without compromising
Miriam Longino
* 02/28/99
The Atlanta Journal - The Atlanta Constitution
(Copyright, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution - 1999)
REVIEW Ray Charles: Man and Music. By Michael Lydon. Riverhead.
$27.95. 429 pages. The verdict: A thorough unmasking of a music
icon.
Ray Charles has been a part of the nation's culture for so long
that it's easy to take him for granted. He seems to have been around
forever, an ageless Muppet seated on a piano stool, rocking back and
forth in a mask of black sunglasses and carefree grin, belting out
his raspy blues.
Yet, after more than four decades as a hitmaker, it's surprising
how little most people really know about the 69-year-old man behind
those shades. Where did he come from? How did he lose his sight?
And is he really the smiling, "uh-huh" hep cat seen in soft drink
commercials and on TV? In this ambitious biography, music journalist
Michael Lydon has rummaged through Charles' mysterious past as if he
were going through the singer's coat pockets, and what he has
discovered is a stunning story of poverty, racism, greed, sex,
wealth, opportunity and power.
From the first, Ray Charles the superstar was never supposed to
happen. Born in 1930 into barefoot poverty in the North Florida town
of Greenville, he was raised in a "colored" neighborhood called
Jellyroll, where women washed white people's clothes and men were
largely absent. His mother, Retha, was 16, an orphan taken in by a
local couple. His father was Retha's married guardian. Though not
technically incest, the relationship was scandalous. On top of it
all, Ray was handicapped, losing his sight at age 6 to congenital
glaucoma.
Although neighbors dismissed him to a future "with a tin cup in
his hand," headstrong Charles had different ideas. After leaving the
Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, where he learned to read music
in Braille and bang out tunes on an upright piano, 18-year-old Ray
bought a one-way ticket to Seattle on a Trailways bus. In the
Pacific Northwest, the young man found jazz music, racial tolerance
and heroin.
It was Charles' 16-year addiction to the seductive drug that
shaped much of his musical style. Without inhibitions, he ran his
long fingers over the keyboard night after night, fusing the smooth
jazz of the day with the blues, gospel and country of his childhood.
That is the signature sound fans would later hear on the radio, an
absolutely fresh approach in which Charles would take standard pop
melodies such as "Georgia on My Mind" or "America the Beautiful" or
country tunes like the Don Gibson classic "I Can't Stop Loving You"
and wrap them up in blues for a white audience. In Seattle, Charles
also met 15-year-old Quincy Jones, who would become one of pop
music's biggest producers and a lifelong friend.
Lydon sets the stage for Charles' unlikely ascension to pop
stardom by reminding us how very segregated the music world was in
the late 1940s and early '50s. Routinely, Charles and his bandmates
encountered Jim Crow on the road, in the form of racist cops and
restaurants that had no "colored" seating. Record companies signed
artists along racial lines, and radio was split into two distinct
camps: white and black.
The chapters dealing with Charles' professional breakthrough and
rise to fame --- through songs such as "Hit the Road, Jack" and
"What'd I Say" --- are the most compelling. In meticulous detail,
Lydon, a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine and a musician,
describes how Atlantic Records founders Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry
Wexler encouraged Charles to drop his guard and sing with his initial
abandon. In fact, the breakthrough happened when Charles recorded
the sassy smash hit "I Got a Woman" at Atlanta's WGST studios in
November 1954. Lydon writes:
" 'I Got a Woman' " had hit written all over it. . . . The record
blended elements like a hybrid flower. It had a dancing beat like a
jump blues, but it was built on gospel's 'rise to glory' chords, and
the cheerful lyric, infectiously delivered by Ray, gave that mix a
pop music gloss. As a bonus, Ray repeated the title so often that 'I
got a woman, way over town' might become a sing-along line people
would plug nickels into the jukeboxes to hear over and over again.
'I Got a Woman' was a record for every happy couple in America,
black, white and in-between."
That tune became the first of a string of hot sellers for Charles,
who developed a rather hedonistic and self-centered response to
success. Though he made millions, the singer was incredibly cheap,
requiring band members to pay their own room and board on the road.
As soon as he became a star, Charles dumped Ertegun, Wexler and
Atlantic for a contract with the milquetoast ABC Records. That's
when strings began appearing on his songs, as well as those insipid,
white-sounding backup singers (remember the chorus of "Georgia on My
Mind"?).
Charles also is portrayed as a major misogynist, cultivating a
musical harem of women who fell in love with him but never seemed to
crack his heart. Hardly a chapter goes by in which the singer hasn't
fathered an illegitimate child, picked up a woman or dropped another
one cold. An inside joke in the Charles entourage, which included
female backup singers known as the Raelets, was that "to be a Raelet,
you have to let Ray." Meanwhile, Della, the woman who would be his
wife for 21 years, stayed quietly at home in Los Angeles, raising
three kids and cooking Charles an occasional Southern meal.
With this quirky private life as a background, Lydon excavates
Charles' musical growth and contribution as thoroughly as an
archaeologist. Every recording session is described in minute
detail, which may become tedious for all but the most hard-core fan.
(Readers might want to consider purchasing the Ray Charles boxed CD
set to use as a tool while reading the book.)
Charles didn't self-destruct like Marvin Gaye did, or take Elvis'
route and become a bloated parody of himself. Rather, now
gray-headed and slightly stooped, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer has
become a required prop for sweeping moments, growling out "America"
under a giant flag at presidential inaugurations, or singing a
chill-bump-raising "Georgia" at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in
Atlanta.
Lydon points out, however, that Charles' contribution to our
culture goes way beyond the hit parade. He didn't march on
Washington or boycott buses, but years before the civil rights
movement, Charles was performing to integrated audiences. The singer
was one of the first to leap from "race" radio to the turntables of
affluent whites, not by becoming a clone of mainstream vocalists (as
did Nat "King"
Cole), but by sticking to soul. With a smile, he paved the way for
people to clap, sing, celebrate and shout "hallelujah" no matter the
color of their skin.
