Jerry Wexler
Producer, Atlantic Records

The first time I met Ray Charles, he was preparing a session with Ahmet [Ertegun] at the Atlantic studio. It was a rehearsal exercise: Ahmet was teaching him the song "Mess Around," which Ahmet wrote. But Ray was also, amazingly, singing these country songs like "Missouri Waltz," then dashing off the most highly evolved bebop piano you'd ever heard.

The definitive Ray Charles session for Atlantic was in Atlanta in 1954, the first with his own band. Before that, we had recorded in a standard studio manner. He came in, we went over songs, we had the arranger -- usually Jesse Stone -- and we'd record him with sidemen. These were not bad records, such as "Sinner's Prayer." But this time, it was as though he had sprung full-blown, like Minerva from Jupiter's head. He called Ahmet and me to Atlanta. We had no idea what to expect. He was staying at the Peacock hotel. Across the street was the Royal Peacock nightclub. He ran down the stairs from the hotel, across the alley, up to this mezzanine -- when Ray knew his territory, we could barely keep up with him -- and there was this seven-piece band, with instruments ready: four horns, three rhythm players, no guitar. And they launched into "I've Got a Woman." Ray had finally found his own voice in this band. It's ironic that Ray Charles, who is surely one of the precursors of rock and roll, which is defined by the guitar, created this sound without one. A guitar would have gotten in the way of those spaces, where the horns came in.

We did the session at WGST, the campus radio station at Georgia Tech. He did "I've Got a Woman," "Come Back Baby," "Greenbacks" and one other song. There was this elderly engineer who didn't know a damn thing about what he was supposed to do. It was three hours before we could get the sound right in the studio. Then we had to stop every hour so they could broadcast the news -- the control room was the newsroom. But out of this, we got those songs, the definitive beginnings of the Ray Charles.

The last time I spoke to him was just before he got sick. We had a wonderful conversation. It was joyous. I never tried to impose a lot of phone calls on him. We talked once every few years. But I was very happy this time when he said, "Pardner" -- he always called me that -- "those were my best years, with you and Ahmet." But when people say, "You and Ahmet produced Ray Charles," put big quotation marks around produced. We were attendants at a happening. We learned from Ray Charles. My dear friend [writer] Stanley Booth once remarked, "When Ahmet and Jerry got ready to record Ray Charles, they went to the studio and turned the lights on. Ray didn't need them."

Billy Joel

In the mid-Eighties, I got a call from Quincy Jones saying, "Ray Charles would love to do a song with you." This is when I was in a prolific period and much more arrogant and I actually thought I could write. When it came time to write the song, I said to myself, "What do Ray Charles and I have in common? He's black, he's blind, he's from Florida, he's got soul. I'm this little white schmuck from Long Island who writes pop songs. But we both play the piano." So I sat down at Burt Bacharach's restaurant here in New York, and I wrote a song called "Baby Grand." Ray loved it, and we recorded it together.

When he walked into that session, it was like the Washington Monument just walked in the room. He looked exactly like Ray Charles was supposed to look: He had the glasses, the hair and the smile. He was tough, though. If the drummer dropped the beat, he could be scary as crap. You didn't want to make a mistake around Ray Charles, because you could feel this glare coming from somewhere behind those glasses. He was very generous with me. I was awkward and shy, singing with my idol. But we met on common ground as piano players. I played the basics, and he would riff on top of my chords. I ain't gonna try to outriff Ray!

Steve Winwood is who brought me to Ray Charles. When Winwood was with the Spencer Davis Group, I was playing in these garage bands, and I thought he had the greatest voice -- this skinny little English kid singing like Ray Charles. The singer of Procol Harum sounded like Ray Charles. When Rod Stewart was singing with the Jeff Beck Group, he was trying to sound like Ray Charles. Even Robert Plant wanted to sound like Ray Charles. There were so many people copping on Ray, and I'll be the first to admit I was trying to sing like Ray Charles, too.

The last time I saw Ray, he inducted me into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1999. I was awed. It was like God himself came down and said, "OK, you're in."

This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley. I don't know if Ray was the architect of rock & roll, but he was certainly the first guy to do a lot of things. He was not a snob about style. Who the hell ever put so many styles together and made it work? He was a true American original.

Keith Richards

The first thing I ever heard by Ray Charles was "What'd I Say." The next thing was the jazz album that had David "Fathead" Newman [Genius + Soul = Jazz]. And then "Hit the Road Jack." The man had range. He wasn't in a bag. He had his own bag. I loved the way he could effortlessly zoom about in all of these things. It was all music to Ray. He was the first true crossover artist. I remember putting off a few of my so-called hipper friends when the Jazz album came out. They said, "Man, he's selling out." But Ray was rock & roll. He was rhythm & blues. He was jazz. He was country. He had such reach -- and far-reaching effect.

With the Rolling Stones being a guitar band primarily, Ray's influence on us was more insidious. For Mick, for anyone singing blues or rhythm & blues, you learned from Ray. If you listened to a lot of Ray, as we did, it rubbed off. Charlie loved the Ray Charles band, especially the drummers. And Ian Stewart would always sit around doodling at the piano on Ray's songs and licks. The whole session, every time we would stop a take, there would be Stu, trying to get one of Ray's piano licks down. In fact, one of my proud piano moments was that I had learned one of Ray's really sweet blues licks and taught it to Ian Stewart. It was the only time I ever taught him anything on piano.

I met Ray once or twice -- "How ya doing?" "Nice to meet ya." Although we knew each other, we just didn't have time to hook up. But I knew a lot of his band. I first saw Ray live in the Sixties, in the States when we first came over. I'm not sure where it was. I know it wasn't any grand joint -- just some place with a sign, "Ray Charles, Now Appearing." It was pretty much an all-black crowd; some of the guys in this group the Vibrations took me there. It must have been on a Southern swing, because I had to pee in the other bathroom, the one with the sign that said "White."

And when the Stones were on the road in the Seventies, a lot of the time we'd be playing the same town either just before Ray or just after. Ray's band was pretty wild -- it was thirty pieces of black dynamite. You'd hear stories: They would be in the bar, the police coming. And when we'd get to the airport the next day, there would always be some poor guy with his drum kit or trombone, standing on the runway because he was late and missed the plane. Ray ran a tight ship.

James Brown

Mr. Ray Charles was a very organized man, well versed in jazz, rock, soul, gospel and country -- he was just one boy you couldn't tie down. When he made country music, a lot of people didn't like it at first, but he made us love it. He sounded like Nat "King" Cole one time, then he sounded like Charles Brown one time, then he went and sounded like Ray Charles. When he played "Georgia On My Mind," well, you can't beat that.

One thing I liked about Brother Ray is that he got his own plane. That made him last longer. That motivated me, and I started renting them after that, and pretty soon I bought me a little jet. See, if you've got a plane, you're not wearing your legs out. Ray was always positive about what he was doing, and I admire him most for that. I tell you one thing: He could see a lot better than those with eyes.

Ahmet Ertegun
Co-founder and chairman, Atlantic Records

Ray Charles had a refinement of spirit that prevented him from ever singing or playing a false note. He was always, always right. And he was an incredible influence on all the rock & roll artists: on the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Van Morrison, Joe Cocker, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck. They were all Ray Charles' friends.

He had a great patience in getting things done correctly in the studio. And he had also a great humility; he had a great deal of concern for everybody else working with him. He was truly a gentle person, but he was a strict leader and a strict disciplinarian. He has been a person from whom I've learned a great deal about how to make a record properly.

Ray Charles is a man who suffered a great deal in his lifetime. You feel a lot of that, in his playing and his singing. But there is also a lot of joy in his playing and singing. And he's brought an incredible amount of joy to millions of people all over the world.

David "Fathead" Newman
Saxophonist

In the beginning, when I was touring with Ray, we had to deal with segregation. There were signs for colored and white everywhere down South. We couldn't stay in white hotels. Ray didn't say much about that; the only thing about it he would rebel against was when we'd stop to get gas. He would be filling up all of our vehicles, and if they wouldn't allow him to use the restroom, he'd tell them to stop pumping the gas right away.

We had some gruesome days playing the theater circuit, places like the Apollo in Harlem and other theaters in D.C. and Chicago. You would start early in the day and you wouldn't finish until around midnight. It was six or seven shows a day. They'd show movies in between some of the shows, but we'd be at the theater all day. This would be in the late Fifties, till about 1960. Backstage we'd play cards, dominoes. Ray and I were very close. I taught him how to play chess, how the pieces moved. From that point on, I was never able to beat him. He had them build him a special chessboard where the pieces had prongs so he could tell where they were located. I asked him once why he could always beat me. He said, "I don't have the distractions that you have." He thought maybe I was looking at girls.

Robbie Robertson

When I was a kid in Toronto, I went to Massey Hall, which is like the Carnegie Hall of Toronto. I was maybe fourteen years old, and I had just gotten the rock & roll bug. I went to see this R&B show where Ray Charles and his band played. They introduced Ray, and at that time they used to introduce him as "Blind Ray Charles." Everybody had been dancing and doing all this big show-business stuff earlier in the show, but when Ray came out there, it got really serious and dark and beautiful. This blue light was hitting him, and the whole thing took me to another place. He sang, and I thought, "That's the best singing I've ever heard in my entire life." And he sang another song, and it was better than the last. It was all too cool. He just played the shit, no messing around, and did it better than anyone else in the world. I'm going through this metamorphosis sitting there. But someone in the crowd is whooping it up, making noises. So Ray Charles says, "If I wasn't blind, I'd come up there and kick your ass." And then he goes into this song "Leave Your Woman Alone" and leans into it with such anger. That's what started me loving Ray Charles.

Years ago, I was in New York staying at the Forest Hotel. A friend of mine and myself met this girl who seemed really, really savvy, and she had some grass. We started hanging out a little, and one day she said, "I have to go over to a studio where Ray Charles is recording." What we didn't know was she was Ray's connection and his sometime lover as well, I think. I went over to the studio with her, and I don't even know what album they were working on. She and Ray went outside to have a discussion for a few minutes about something. They were gone for a while, and the producer was getting impatient. Ray came back in and sat at the piano, kind of daydreaming or something. The producer went over and said something to Ray, and Ray just punched him right in the face. The girl turned to me and said, "We better go." I thought, "I don't know what that was about, but I'm sure Ray was right."

James Taylor

When I was seventeen, I was on a locked ward in a mental hospital in Boston called McLean Hospital. That's a whole other story, of course. But Ray Charles was checked in for a few days every six months, probably as a result of some drug bust. One way or the other, my idol was suddenly dropped onto this insane asylum, in my building -- North Belknap. When I went to dinner one evening, he was eating rubbery chicken with the rest of the inmates. I couldn't tell if I was hallucinating or not. He was clearly deeply brought down to be there. There was a piano there and he played a little bit. It was like some kind of a visitation.

Ray Charles has made the greatest individual contribution to American music in my lifetime. There are dozens and dozens of tunes that he recorded that nailed the tune: "Baby It's Cold Outside," "Hit the Road Jack," "Drown in My Own Tears," "What'd I Say," "I've Got a Woman." He never missed, and his versions were always the quintessential versions. He was a genius. He was the one.

Paul Shaffer

Ray Charles defines soul. In the battle of the soul giants, he is the undisputed king. Everyone moves up one now, because the king is dead.

He was just the funkiest organ player -- the epitome of hip. And his vocals were so soulful that it took a lot of nerve to even approach one of his tunes; it was significant to even try to cover a Ray Charles song. You knew that, say, Stevie Winwood had a lot of balls to even attempt to cover "Georgia On My Mind." Today I hear his influence everywhere, from R. Kelly to Beyonce to Usher.

I first worked with Ray Charles when he hosted Saturday Night Live in the Seventies. I was very young, and scared -- it was my first year on SNL, and here I was playing organ with Ray Charles. We were rehearsing his version of "Oh What a Beautiful Morning." On our first run-through, he stopped the song and he said, "Organ! Play it with some soul!" The bandleader jumped in to my rescue, saying, "He's got it, try it again," so Ray showed me what to do by singing a little chunk. I hit it really hard on the second run-through, and he gave me a reassuring "Yeah, that's more like it." I was thrilled.

Ray got comfortable with me in time, and we ended up working together on a number of things. Once we did this wonderful piano-players summit in New Orleans with him and Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino. I remember we were going to do "Jambalaya," by Hank Williams, because all three musicians had recorded it at different times. The thing was that they all did it in different keys. Fats did it in D-flat; Jerry Lee thought that was absurd and that the song should be done in B. I was still very young, and I didn't know what to do. So I went to Ray Charles -- the Genius -- and said, "Ray, we've got a little problem. Everybody wants to do the song in a different key." And he said, "Man, I can do it in any key, just get me out of here!"

We never ended up holding rehearsals, but on the show that night he was absolutely brilliant. It makes me think of that old Flip Wilson routine: Why did Christopher Columbus discover America? To bring the world Ray Charles.

Brian Wilson

Ray Charles' music got me through high school -- that's when I listened to him the most. I loved him so much that back in 1963, after the Beach Boys got going, we used to do a live version of "What'd I Say." We did it because we wanted to turn people on to Ray Charles. It was always a real thrill for me to sing that song and think of Ray, so you can just imagine how I felt when, in 1986, Ray sang a version of our song "Sail On Sailor." He was so brilliant, and he sang it better than we did. Maybe most of all what I remember him for is his sensitive singing on cuts like "I Can't Stop Loving You." You can be sure the whole world will never stop loving you, Ray.

Ahmir Thompson
Drummer, the Roots

My introduction to Ray Charles was probably his appearance on Sesame Street, when I was a kid -- he was singing with a Muppet. But I didn't get a full respect for him as an artist until Quincy Jones started waxing poetic about his contributions to music. For a younger person, Ray Charles was the guy who sang "America the Beautiful" and had those three Pepsi girls singing with him. But Quincy Jones talked about how Ray owned his masters at a very young age, how he had a lot of artistic control in a time, the Fifties and Sixties, when it was pretty much out of the question for any black man to own his own masters. Or any artist, for that matter.

I started collecting his records one by one. Ray's vocal prowess is taken for granted. Sam Cooke said in interviews that you had to water down your soul, so you wouldn't sound too threatening to the audience. But Charles' vocal inflections and his phrasing were very much raw and gritty. It was the equivalent of serving collard greens and ham hocks at the White House. Put Ray Charles on a ten-dollar bill, that's what I say.

Bonnie Raitt

There was music before Ray Charles, and there's music after Ray Charles. It's that stark a difference. I don't think anyone did more to bring soul music into popular American music than Ray Charles did.

When I was eleven or twelve, a family friend gave me a whole box of Ray's music -- his entire catalog. It was a windfall -- that was back in the day when you'd get one record for Christmas and decided between the new Dylan or the new Joan Baez. So all of a sudden I'm given this extraordinary gift, and it really changed my life. People always say, "How did you get to be such a soulful singer?" and I can't help but think that it has a lot to do with being exposed to that box of Ray's music at an impressionable age. I guess I learned from the best.

I got to record with him for his duets project. It was the first time I met him. He was in poor health when we did the project, and his energy was limited. But he was still sharp as a tack. He was very kind and generous and appreciative --very present. And when I heard that voice and that piano coming out of the headphones, well, that was the pinnacle of my career -- along with singing with John Lee Hooker and my dad. I sung with some amazing people, but that was truly chilling. My only regret is that he didn't live to see how this record was received.

Martin Scorcese

The first Ray Charles record I heard was "Hallelujah I Love Her So." I wore it down. I still have the 78. I was thirteen-years-old or so, and I hadn't really been that exposed to rhythm and blues. I had never heard a voice like his: just the joy of it, the swing of it, the attitude, the extraordinary command. The big revelation, however, was the flip side of that single, "What Would I Do Without You" -- there's an extraordinary moment in the last part of the song where he hits a very strong falsetto, which is burned in my blood. It's there, and it just goes through my head all the time. I've tried to use him in my films: When we did King of Comedy, we used a little theme of his throughout called "Sweet 16 Bars," which is exactly what he did on the piano on "What Would I Do Without You." Ray Charles was the original for me, the master, the top one; more people know about music and the history of rhythm and blues than I do, but that 78 rpm record affected me -- for my entire life, really.