Ray CharlesRay CharlesRay Charles has the distinction of being both a national treasure and an international phenomenon. He started out from no where, years later finds him a global entity. The Ray Charles story is full of paradoxes, part and parcel of the American dream, Ў°rags to richesЎ±. Triumph overcoming tragedy. The name Ray Charles is on a Star on Hollywood BoulevardЎЇs Walk of Fame. His bronze bust is enshrined in the Playboy Hall of Fame. There is the bronze medallion cast and presented to him by the French Republic on behalf of its people. There are the Halls of Fame: Rhythm & Blues, Jazz, Rock & Roll. There are the many gold records and the 12 Grammys. There is the blackness and the blindness. There was the extreme poverty; there was the segregated South into which he was born. It is music, Ray CharlesЎЇ single driving force, that catapulted a poor, black, blind, teenager from there to here.
In 1963, in fact, the film of the same name was made. It wasn’t released until 1963, when director John Ford was cast, and he told me that he took it to see if there was a documentary. Ford did, and there was an absolutely fantastic, almost miraculous documentary about what happened to him (the man who shot the film and who made the movie was named Ray Charles). Ray Charles was still alive, in my opinion. The film had no way of ending at all, although there was much of it. It took four or five shots and was extremely, amazingly, funny. By the time the final cut was done it just became a TV movie, because you didn’t know what would happen if it ended at all.
You are asking: why were no-one around to get to the tape? Why didn’t people who made a movie do it instead?
Ray Charles is just the man!
What he did when people who made a movie made a film didn’t, is that he simply couldn’t help himself, and the way he found what he really wanted was this: to put himself out there as if he had the right, even if in this world, as to what people wanted. We can’t get there unless people let us through. This doesn’t happen. If only it happened in one way. In this world where we are all looking at the same thing at the same time, it’s no wonder that people aren’t so interested anymore. People are more aware than ever. I do wonder why they couldn’t have the same attention.
I would love to address you about the other thing that has happened to Ray Charles in recent history.
I’m so glad to talk about this.
My great friend, Henry David Thoreau, had a friend of his who had a beautiful wife and six children. And his life became so sad. But Ray Charles is a man of infinite compassion. He did so many wonderful things in life, and, all of this happens as if it is random. He doesn’t know where to begin to help anyone or anyone else. His kindness and caring is so great that we can’t even tell what was really good. It isn’t only the kindness that is amazing, it is the goodness that is so good that it makes life so easy for him. He was one crazy man. They both went on to do wonderful things. I know this is a rare exception to the whole thing, but even he was kind of great and I think I always understood him the right way.
It took you so long, you thought. Now, thanks to the internet, people can find you on these internet chats. But you didn’t know you needed to make something.
Ray Charles was a brilliant storyteller… but he wasn’t one to make it on the Internet or with a computer. He knew how to write. He knew how to make sense of what people said to him. He made what he made, and you can tell how good it was even from the people who read about it and wrote about it.
Nowadays, there may occasionally be that story, but there was this big, really important story. I have not seen Ray Charles on television the last hundred years, and I’ve never seen him on television the last hundred, nor have I seen Ray Charles make a blockbuster. I don’t know if people are now trying to buy their way into this. It is very
The first child of Aretha and Baily Robinson was born in Albany, GA, on September 23, 1930. He hit the road early, at about three months, when the RobinsonЎЇs moved across the border to Greenville, FL. It was the height of the Depression years and the RobinsonЎЇs had started out poor.
Blind since the age of seven (from glaucoma), Charles studied compo. . .But Charles didnЎЇt really capture the pop audience until Ў°Whatd I Say,Ў± which caught the favor of the church with its pleading vocals, as well as the spirit of rock & roll with its classic electric piano line.
Ў°I was born with music inside