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Interests: Star gazing, reading, movies, shopping
Favorite Music: Ray started out wanting to be Nat "King" Cole. When Nat went down low in a song, like "Mona Lisa, " there was a growl in there that was kind of sexy. Ray took that to a whole other level. He took the growl and turned it into singing. He took the yelp, the whoop, the grunt, the groan, and made them music.
Also, he was a piano player. The piano is a percussion instrument. You put your body into it. Ray had a lot of unique body movements I didn't know until I saw him on TV . Before I saw him, I heard those movements as he sang. I heard his shoulder go up a little on the left side, the way he lifted himself off the stool. Then I realized the voice I was hearing was also playing that piano.
The first Ray Charles I heard was Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. He'd had hits before that, the R&B stuff, like "What'd I Say." But here is a black man giving you the whitest possible music in the blackest possible way, while all hell is breaking loose with the civil rights movement. When he sang "You Don't Know Me, " I thought, "He isn't just singing the lyrics. He's saying, 'You don't know me. Get to know me.' "
He could be very sly with a song. His version of "America the Beautiful" is an iconic recording. There was so much feeling in his performance. It was his way of saying, "This is my country too. We gave you your popular music. This was ours before it was yours."
But Ray synthesized the blues into a language everybody could relate to. You can't listen to Ray Charles and not say, "This is a man who felt deeply, who has lived this music." He shows you his humanity.
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