Ray Charles dies at 73

[DRL]

Ray Charles dies at 73



BEVERLY HILLS, California (AP) -- Ray Charles, the Grammy-winning crooner who blended gospel and blues in such crowd-pleasers as "What'd I Say" and heartfelt ballads like "Georgia on My Mind," died Thursday, a spokesman said. He was 73.

Charles died at his Beverly Hills home surrounded by family and friends, said spokesman Jerry Digney.

Charles' last public appearance was alongside Clint Eastwood on April 30, when the city of Los Angeles designated the singer's studios, built 40 years ago in central Los Angeles, as a historic landmark.

Blind by age 7 and an orphan at 15, Charles spent his life shattering any notion of musical boundaries and defying easy definition. A gifted pianist and saxophonist, he dabbled in country, jazz, big band and blues, and put his stamp on it all with a deep, warm voice roughened by heartbreak from a hardscrabble childhood in the segregated South.

"His sound was stunning -- it was the blues, it was R&B, it was gospel, it was swing -- it was all the stuff I was listening to before that but rolled into one amazing, soulful thing," singer Van Morrison told Rolling Stone magazine in April.

Charles won nine of his 12 Grammy Awards between 1960 and 1966, including the best R&B recording three consecutive years ("Hit the Road Jack," "I Can't Stop Loving You" and "Busted").

His versions of other songs are also well known, including "Makin' Whoopee" and a stirring "America the Beautiful." Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell wrote "Georgia on My Mind" in 1931 but it didn't become Georgia's official state song until 1979, long after Charles turned it into an American standard.

Another legend as left us.Thank you Mr. Charles your music will live on forever.

[DRL]

A LIFE OF MUSIC

Born Ray Charles Robinson in Albany, Ga., on Sept. 23, 1930, he later dropped the family name to avoid confusion with middleweight boxing champ Sugar Ray Robinson.

Charles, who grew up poor in Greenville, Fla., was stricken with glaucoma at the age of six and lost his sight at seven. He was educated at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine, where he learned to read music in Braille and studied clarinet, alto sax, trumpet and piano.

With the death of his mother in 1945, Charles struck out on his own. As a neophyte pro musician, he played with big bands and jump-blues combos, and a gig with a "hillbilly" group called the Florida Playboys -- work prefiguring his eclectic and restless recording career.

He honed his skills with journeyman work in the late '40s in Seattle, where he led a trio variously known as the McSon Trio and the Maxin Trio. He also began using heroin; his drug addiction would dog him until the mid-'60s.

In 1949, Charles made his recording debut on Jack Lauderdale's L.A. independent Down Beat/Swing Time Records. His sides for the label, produced by pianist Lloyd Glenn, showed a teenage performer in the thrall of the reigning singer-pianists Nat King Cole and Charles Brown.

While Charles' work for Lauderdale yielded three R&B chart hits, he didn't find his stride until New York indie Atlantic Records purchased his contract in 1952.

DIVINE INSPIRATION

Initially, Atlantic's owners Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler groped for a suitable setting for their new signing. In 1954 -- the year after he arranged and played on Guitar Slim's huge Specialty hit "The Things I Used to Do" -- Charles reached the R&B top five with "It Should Have Been Me," a comic stop-time number.

However, Charles found the touchstone of his style the following year, when, on the road in Indiana, he heard a gospel song on the car radio. He asked trumpeter Renald Richard to help him convert it into a secular number.

The resultant tune, "I've Got a Woman," reached No. 1 on the R&B chart, where it spent 20 weeks. Combining the testifying intensity of gospel and the worldly eroticism of secular music, it became the template for a new form of R&B that would be known as soul music.

"Brother Ray," as his preaching delivery led him to be known, followed that landmark with a run of top-five Atlantic R&B hits -- "A Fool For You," "This Little Girl of Mine," "Drown in My Own Tears," "Hallelujah I Love Her So," "(Night Time is) the Right Time" -- that solidified his rep as the high priest of soul.

He reached his apotheosis with the electrifying 1959 call-and-response tune "What'd I Say." The two-part single stayed on the R&B chart for 17 weeks and hit No. 1, and was a No. 6 pop smash.

Atlantic showcased Charles' versatility in a variety of projects: the album of funk-jazz instrumentals "The Great Ray Charles" (1957); 1958 and 1961 collaborations with vibraphonist Milt Jackson; and the boldly-arranged 1960 big-band set "The Genius of Ray Charles," which won him two Grammys.

MOVING ON

In 1960 - -ironically, right after cutting a version of Hank Snow's country hit "I'm Movin' On" -- Charles deserted Atlantic for a lucrative deal with ABC-Paramount Records.

He immediately made his mark for the label with a diverse raft of singles: the ballad "Georgia On My Mind" (which collected two Grammys); the jazz organ arrangement of "One Mint Julep" (for ABC's jazz subsidiary, Impulse!); "Baby It's Cold Outside," a duet with jazz vocalist Betty Carter; and, most notably, "I Can't Stop Loving You."

The latter number -- a cover of Don Gibson's No. 7 country hit from 1958 -- inaugurated a long string of best selling country-soul fusions by Charles.

The song, a huge No. 1 pop and R&B hit, was drawn from "Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music, which spent 14 weeks at No. 1 on the pop album chart.

The album and its "Volume 2" successor spawned hit interpretations of songs by Eddy Arnold ("You Don't Know Me"), Ted Daffan ("Born to Lose"), Hank Williams ("Your Cheatin' Heart" and "Take These Chains From My Heart") and Jimmie Davis ("You Are My Sunshine").

PERSONAL DEMONS

By 1964, Charles seemed on top of the world.

He had his own ABC imprint, Tangerine Records (which would release albums by Charles and his productions of vocalist-writer Percy Mayfield and singer Jimmy Scott). He controlled his publishing and his masters. And he opened his own L.A. studio, designed in part by Atlantic engineer Tom Dowd.

But his personal life was coming apart.

On Oct. 31, 1964, he was busted in the Boston airport after customs officers found marijuana, heroin and a syringe in his overcoat. Charles, who had been arrested for drug possession earlier in Indianapolis and Philadelphia, was shaken and scared. Taking a year off from touring, he checked into an L.A. hospital and kicked his junk habit.

Sentenced to probation, Charles celebrated with the late-1965 release of "Crying Time," his No. 6 pop cover of Buck Owens' country hit. It proved to be his last top-10 pop chart entry, but Charles had already moved into eminent territory.

Within years, his influence would be heard in the work of white vocalists -- Steve Winwood, Van Morrison, Joe Cocker -- who claimed him as their stylistic avatar.

ECLECTIC COLLABORATIONS

Charles moved into the '70s with a stirring guest shot on Aretha Franklin's album "Live at the Fillmore," and a hallmark pure-funk rendition of "America the Beautiful" on his 1972 collection "A Message From the People."

In 1976, he collaborated with English vocalist Cleo Laine on an interpretation of Gershwin's "Porgy & Bess." The following year, he returned to Atlantic with the underrated album "True to Life." His second stint with the label lasted until 1980.

That year, Charles' lagging career received a boost when he was signed by Rick Blackburn, head of CBS Records' Nashville division, and returned to country music.

His association with Columbia Records yielded hit duets with George Jones, Hank Williams Jr. and Mickey Gilley, and a No. 1 country album, 1984's "Friendship," and single, the Willie Nelson duet "Seven Spanish Angels."

Charles moved to Warner Bros. Records in 1990. "I'll Be Good to You," his duet with Chaka Khan for his old Seattle colleague Quincy Jones' Qwest imprint, won a Grammy in 1991. He received the last of his dozen Grammys in 1994, for "A Song For You."

In 1997, Charles' classic recordings got extensive re-release through a licensing deal between the singer and Rhino Records.

Charles' most recent album was 2002's "Thanks For Bringing Love Around Again," on his own Crossover imprint. Concord Records has scheduled an album of duets with such talents as Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Elton John, Bonnie Raitt and James Taylor for release on Aug. 31.

(Additional reporting by Barry A. Jeckell in New York.)


-- Chris Morris, L.A.

[Mr._Shooter]

A legend, without a doubt. He will be missed.

That being said, I never knew about his heroin addiction until I read today's yahoo headline article. Never figured him for that, although the '60s did do a number on almost everyone in the entertainment business (and a good number of regular Joes as well).