Last Words of Brother Ray

DEATH,” RAY CHARLES TOLD ME when he first learned that cancer was devouring his body, “is the one motherfucker that ain’t ever going away.”

I met Ray Charles in 1975, when he agreed to let me ghostwrite his autobiography. He was vulgar, refined, funny, sexy, spontaneous, outlandish, brave, brutal, tender, blue, ecstatic. He would wrap his arms around his torso, hugging himself in a grand gesture of self-affirmation. In normal conversation, he preached and howled and fell the floor laughing. He was, in his own words, “raw-ass country.”

Because my job was to take the material of our dialogues and weave them into a first-person narrative, I had to make sure the dialogues were deep. I began tentatively by saying. “Now if this question is too tough…”

“How the fuck can a question be too tough? The truth is the truth.”

The truth – at least Ray’s truth – came pouring out: that his life had been rough; that his life had been blessed; that he had followed his musical muse wherever it led; that he had been a junkie; that he had given up junk only when faced with prison; that every day he still drank lots of gin and smoked lots of pot and worked just as tirelessly; that he had a huge appetite for women; that he wasn’t even certain how many children he had fathered; that he was unrepentant about it all.

“When my mother died, I didn’t understand death,” he told me. “Couldn’t feature it. What do you mean, she’s gone forever? I was fifteen, living at a school for the blind 160 miles away from home. She was all I had in the world. No, she couldn’t be dead. Can’t make it without her.

“That’s when I saw what everyone sees: You can’t make a deal with death. No, sir. And you can’t make a deal with God. Death is coldblooded, and maybe God is, too. So I’m alone, and I’m going crazy, until a righteous Christian lady from the little country town where I grew up wakes me and shakes me and says, ‘Boy, stop feeling sorry for yourself. You gotta carry on.”‘

I wondered if the experience made him more religious.

“Made me realize I had to depend on me,” he shot back. “No one was going to do shit for me. You hear me? No one. I could praise Jesus till I’m blue in the face. Pray till the cows come home. But Mama ain’t coming back. So if Mama gave me religion, the religion said, ‘Believe in yourself.”‘

Early the next morning I was eager to continue the conversation.

“Ray, I just want to ask you another question about death….”

“Look, man,” he said, irritated and tired, “I wouldn’t talk to my mama now if she came out the grave.” And with that, he fell asleep.

BROTHER RAY: RAY CHARLES’ OWN Story” came out in 1978. Ray liked the book because, as he said, “it’s me — and I like me.”

When he turned sixty, in 1990, I asked him if he had regrets.

“About what?”

“Paternity suits from women who claimed they had your babies, complaints from musicians who claim you owe them money…”

“Motherfuck it,” he spat. “I paid what was due. Fact is, no one’s paid dues like me. If someone can prove I owe him, I’ll pay. If they can’t, I won’t.”

When he turned seventy, in 2000, I asked him if he wanted to collaborate on a sequel to his autobiography. “All the facts are in Brother Ray. What would we talk about?”

“We’d reflect.”

“About what?”

“The changes you’ve been through since 1978.”

“I don’t see no changes, baby. I’m still me. Still kicking plenty ass.”

Then, in the summer of 2003, everything changed.

I heard he was having hip problems and was canceling his U.S. tour. Ray never cancels tours. I knew something was deeply wrong.

When I called Ray, he didn’t sound himself. “My liver’s not right,” he said. “I’m not putting out no press release, but I heard them use the word cancer.”

A month later, my phone rang shortly after midnight. “I’m thingking,” he said, “that we need to add some stuff to the book. But right now I’m tired. I’ll call you when I can.”

Weeks passed before he called. “Someone said,” he told me, “that if you picture yourself well, you get well. If you can conceive it, you achieve it. I’m focusing on the future. But I got to say, man, that the past keeps coming up.”

“What part of the past?” I ask.

“Some of it is funny shit. Like this one time from the early days. I was fucking someone’s old lady when Mr. Someone came home. I didn’t even know there was a Mr. Someone. But there we were, screwing like rabbits, when we hear the door opening, and she’s whispering, ‘Oh, my God, it’s my husband.’

“‘What husband?’ I want to know.

“‘The one who’s crazy jealous and carries a razor.’