Remembering Ray

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.

[From Issue 952/953 — July 8, 2004] 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.