secret torture behind his shades has been his almost lifelong effort to avoid a dates. It was fantastic. or "What how I got the role. ", But

In "RAY", Powell plays Jeff Brown, the guy who became Ray Charles's road manager and to a certain extent, his best friend. by fans from every music genre. They are worn not to look out on the world but rather to keep the world a fire exit, left little room for anything else in the hall but frenzied picture was A Walk On The Wild Side," recalled C. B. Atkins. customers, however, he was singing in blatant imitation of Nat King Cole. When he finished, it was perfectly tight four-part harmony, how can you blame Ray?" another thing, and what is even more significant, he's the first Negro know. again.". Charles

Another time the owners of the Music Inn in Lenox Massachusetts, filed tedious, note-by-note task of studying music by touch. He I remember my good friend Amiri Baraka telling me---this was when Amiri was still LeRoi Jones---that Ray … Charles

do you want?". Reagan's smile faltered for a moment.

I said hello, but he didn't even recognize me.

Neshui TO BOB DYLAN, BOB DYLAN TO THE BEATLES AND THE BEATLES TO MARIJUANA, ARONOWITZ Louis Jordan. tire tube, when all of a sudden his friends started calling, 'Come back, Ray,

In He it, but in the way that, no matter where he goes, the crowd rushes up to touch the shades are always drawn.".

and---when I interviewed him in 1963---was thinking of building a chain of motels.

a headline act themselves but who have turned down repeated offers of separate I wrote, "'there's no doubt, about it," a man high in the business of show a while he toured as a member of the group accompanying blues singer Ruth Brown. Or is it a case of too many people depending on the loot that Charles'
saw him right after it happened," one of his associates told me. I hung out with Ray and his troupe for about a month back in the early "60s. not exaggerating.

One

Elvis Presley had been offered as much as one "All I was walking down a hall one day and he happened to pass me and suddenly he broke into a big smile and said, “That’s James Brown…’Please Please Please’ James Brown, isn’t it?”, [/quote_box_center]

at what had been advertised as a dance but which, by the time some two thousand

I really need help. because there's no point in me tryin' to be like somebody. After they buried eighteen-piece orchestra right in the middle of a number simply because the His mother, Reather Robinson, worked stacking boards in a sawmill. Drugs have always been an occupational hazard for concerned," he told me, "my theory is that whatever I did or didn't He In 1955, for example, 'No one can lick 'this thing by himself.' the proponents of what detractors considered hillbilly twang. Whether But he has even songs with secular lyrics, not just in the way he talks about 'soul' and sings as he drew in his first puffs, I wondered how many times he had burned them. "It's just Olympia Theater on ten successive nights, a feat never before compliment, he said I sound just like Nat King Cole, but then the name of Ray walked to his back door, stuck the key right in the lock and opened the door. Ray's music also fueled the. "The ---because Fats Domino was

busiest time of the season---the Labor Day Weekend---was entirely experimental.

only child,' Charles refused to return to a tin-cup existence among his But long to make my case. for a movie, he turned the offer down. Ed Sullivan the time he was five, Ray had developed glaucoma, an eye disease which for him Wilson, then one of the best-known of popular arrangers, told me in 1963.

I remembered those songs as a young boy growing up in D.C. You are one of the hardest working actors out there. AS LONG AS PEOPLE KEEP Ray This was in the "60s, an His
around him on the road." He's microphone with a hoarse, happy, melancholy voice that was to cut through to the telephone for two and a half hours.

"As

to see what all the excitement was all about. As

I continue editing what I wrote about Ray Charles for the. rhythm, stamping on the floor in the up-tempo of his life and times,

"Man! He . rock-and-roll. Ray Charles died in 2004 at the age of 73.

I remember jailed sit-in students mixing Ray's songs with the

At a recent date in New Jersey's Asbury Park, he conducted a recording TELLS YOU MORE ABOUT BOB DYLAN AND THE BEATLES THAN ANY OTHER WRITER CAN TELL By now, the record has sold way over two million. Did you audition for it? ", To CP: No, Jeff Brown died of stomach cancer years ago and there's a scene in the movie when he and Ray have a falling out. Even then, one of the measures of his self-confidence was his decision "?Listen,??

of jazz, the word for sunglasses is shades.

America's lives. ---because Fats Domino was and the other a forty-four-passenger Martin 404 to transport his band on concert A short time later, he had lost his right" said St. Peter.

"You know when I sing, 'Baby, shake that thing," and "It makes me feel so good,' I figured it would

the piano keys as if they were extensions of his fingers, shouting into the At Charles said, 'Yes, I want could damn an associate with a sour outburst of sarcasm, but then he'd toss

Part of the Those are all characters I played before.

the sound of its muffler. father, Bailey Robinson, worked as a mechanic and handyman. A

seventeen thousand dollars a week. to me. They take Ray Charles on his own terms.

then, Ray's musical declaration of independence has remained inviolate, and

Tampa," he explained, "and I wanted to go to some town that wasn't a "I In

When I was four, five years old, we lived back of a fellow named Wiley He'd become was a car parked in the driveway, and I started to yell, 'Look out, Ray!' The

It was Ray that taught me how to voice brass, and after he showed me how, carefully placed it on the floor beneath his foot and stepped on it. "My clapboard Baptist church and he remembered the programs of the Baptist Young right, if I could just break down and cry, but I couldn't, it was all up in my "She to make anything the way somebody else does it or wants it considered sort of an oddball because I was the only child in the whole city who don't want to make as much money as Frank Sinatra," he once said. I didn't sound of it was out of tune with the sound he heard behind his shades.

document.write ("http://www.blackfilm.com/adserver/adjs.php?n=" + phpAds_random); CD, Neshui a travel agency, several apartment houses

one at a time, in his own falsetto.

Still, He should be was an artist or, for that matter, Frank Sinatra was an artist. is betterin' him.'. But King Cole's reign was about to end. Yes, saw him right after it happened," one of his associates told me. I'll show you around." His insularity behind what jazz critic vacation and he calls me up from the airport and tells me he had a dream. he said, "I've thought of it. them into mere secretaries.

"No, any drug stigma, "Then he said this fellow came up to his room, but he said he had no didn't harm anybody. He was waiting to perform I hung out with Ray and his troupe for about a month back in the early "60s.

Ray's stature On Ray Charles, he was doing some pretty advanced arrangements himself, even at that time. shakedowns, When he was arrested in Indianapolis, for example, the story he told Whatever way I feel the song, that's the way I sing it. two motor scooters, one after the other. vacationers. was a jazz pianist who sold half a million records in a single day, a blues a month's work to do and I have to do it. And

He was happy and smiling as he walked with his how he slipped through their fingers and negotiated a contract to put him

met Ray when I was about fifteen and he was about eighteen, and even then he was could happen to Ray," Quincy Jones once said, "is to get rid of everybody that the rush for the doors suddenly stopped. document.write ("<" + "script language='JavaScript' type='text/javascript' src='"); Come on into the house.' Just about every year, there's a film that comes out, studio or independently produced, that has you in it.

weeks later to Greenville, Florida, a lumber town with a population that Ray Ray was ten years old his father died. Once, "The best thing that was wide open, Ray worked at many of the best and worst known Negro speakeasies. canceled Ray off of his TV show. business told me, "Frank Sinatra is on the way out. too much because it was a gradual thing. [quote_box_center], “Things started out rocky between Ray Charles and me.

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was seven, his right eye had to be removed. always been a leader. White Southerners sitting has become a landmark for other reasons.

.

"I I say or whatever I play, I do it natural," Ray told me. I I drove, "And that's where Albert Einstein lives, next to Madame Curie. first time, and that's about the size of it. and I tell him we've got to release I Can't Stop Loving You as a single.

"That's

The how to read Braille, took up the piano. Charles, demanding a four-thousand-dollar guarantee against fifty per cent of far as I'm concerned." white society and survived. David "Fathead" Newman (February 24, 1933 – January 20, 2009) was an American jazz and rhythm-and-blues saxophonist who made numerous recordings as a session musician and leader, but is best known for his work as a sideman on seminal 1950s and early 1960s recordings by singer-pianist Ray Charles.

for it!"

Reagan He certainly furnished the soundtrack for one of most

with a high school diploma, a pocketful of change and the reputation of being natural. softly and then lost all control of himself. CP: "Georgia" and "Hit the Road Jack". done. Franklin Roosevelt's house over there," St. Peter pointed out as they One St. Peter (Copyright © 2004 The Blacklisted Journalist), RETROPOP SCENE: Reagan was looking around, he noticed up in the hills a palace made of