Ray Charles: The Rolling Stone Interview

You were also able to hear ‘The Grand Ole Opry’ when you were a kid?
Yep, yeah, I always – every Saturday night, I never did miss it. I don’t know why I liked the music. I really thought that it was somethin’ about country music, even as a youngster – I couldn’t figure out what it was then, but I know what it is now. But then I don’t know why I liked it and I used to just love to hear Minnie Pearl, because I thought she was so funny.

How old were you then?
Oh, I guess I was about seven, eight, and I remember Roy Acuff and Gene Austin. Although I was bred in and around the blues, I always did have interest in other music, and I felt the closest music, really, to the blues – they’d make them steel guitars cry and whine, and it really attracted me. I don’t know what it is. Gospel and the blues are really, if you break it down, almost the same thing. It’s just a question of whether you’re talkin’ about a woman or God. I come out of the Baptist church, and naturally whatever happened to me in that church is gonna spill over. So I think the blues and gospel music is quite synonymous to each other.

Big Bill Broonzy once said that “Ray Charles has got the blues he’s cryin’ sanctified. He’s mixin’ the blues with the spirituals. . . . He should be singin’ in a church.”
I personally feel that it was not a question of mixing gospel with the blues. It was a question of singin’ the only way I knew how to sing. This was not a thing where I was tryin’ to take the church music and make the blues out of it or vice versa. All I was tryin’ to do was sing the only way I knew how, period. I was raised in the church. I went to the Sunday school. I went to the morning service, and that’s where they had the young people doin’ their performin’, and I went to night service, and I went to all the revival meetings. My parents said, “You will go to church.” I mean they ain’t no if about that. So singin’ in the church and hearin’ this good singin’ in the church and also hearin’ the blues, I guess this was the only way I could sing, outside of loving Nat Cole so well, and I tried to imitate him very much. When I was starting out, I loved the man so much until I really – that’s why I can understand a lot of other artists who come up and try to imitate me. You know, when you love somebody so much and you feel what they’re doin’ is close to what you feel, some of that rubs off on you – so I did that.

But, say, Joe Cocker is a white man, and British; you were emulating a fellow black.
That’s right, but man, look, I want you to – please, if you can ever put this into words, ’cause I can’t say it, but if you can ever find a way to say this – I wish to hell that people could do one thing. We don’t have to lose our identity. Nobody does, because they happen to do a certain thing. I feel that you’ve got great basketball players – white and black ones. You got great musicians – white and black ones. I’ve heard where a person says, “Well, damn, you know one thing, man, I didn’t realize that guy was white until” . . . or, “I didn’t realize that this person was black until . . . ” You understand what I’m sayin? I’m not the kind of a guy that wants to generalize and say that you can’t do this if you’re black or you can’t do that if you’re white. I think that if a man has had the kicking around and the abuse and the scorn, I think that if he has talent, he can put that some way or another so that the people can hear him. I remember one time a guy asked me, hey, man, do you think a white cat could ever sing the blues? Which is a legitimate question. It didn’t hurt my feelings. I feel that anybody, if you ever have the blues bad enough, with the background that dictates to the horror and the sufferin’ of the blues, I don’t give a damn if he’s green, purple – he can give it to ya.

It was said that Joe Cocker, or his people, were picking out more of the contemporary rock and roll material that was popular with a large segment of the young audience. . . .
When you say he has a bigger whatever-it-was with the “young audience”– what young audience? All right now. Come on, now. I guarantee you [shouting] you got far more people who know . . . you’re talkin’ about the overall white audience. Let’s call a spade a spade or whatever. . . .

Young, white audience. . . .
Well, I don’t care what you call it, I don’t care whether it’s two years old, five, I don’t care what you call it – the fact – you can never get away from it, man, it’s just no way to get away from this. I am not saying it out of bitterness. I’m just telling you the truth of the matter, and I’m old enough. Hell, I’m 42 years old. I never joke with Ray about realism, and the fact of the matter is here’s Joe Cocker, here’s a guy – listen, I’ll tell you something’ – I guess about 10, well, it’s back there more than that – maybe 13-14 years ago, they had ads in the paper where they were tryin’ to find anybody to sing like me. You think about that for a minute. You see?

I guarantee Joe Cocker ain’t never appealed more to the young people who raised me up. He appeals to the young white because he’s white. Shit, man. That ain’t a mad statement, that’s just the truth. [Laughter.] You don’t fool around with the truth. When you get a guy who come up and say, like an Elvis Presley, let’s face it, man, you had more people goin’ out shakin’ their behinds and stuff like that. You know where Elvis got that from – he used to be down on Beale Street in Memphis. That’s where he saw the black people doin’ that. Ain’t no way they’d let anybody like us get on TV and do that, but he could ’cause he’s white. Now, see, I don’t like to bring the racial thing in this, but unfortunately, the way we are set up, the whole thing is man, I guarantee you, Nat “King” Cole go down there in Alabama and sing these love songs and they’d beat him up. You understand what I mean? Why? Not because he’s doin’ a bad job, but because the young white girls run up and say, “Oh, Nat!” and they say, “No, we can’t have that.” Come on, man, shit, that’s where it is.

I don’t have time to be bitter. What I have time for is to try to see what I can do to help the guy that’s comin’ up and maybe he can make it better if I can help him. You see? I done seen all this, man. I know all about the places where I couldn’t drink outta the fountain. I know all about the places I couldn’t go to the bathroom when I had to pee – somethin’ that’s natural for every human bein’. You understand me? And if I do it on the highway and the cop see me, he gonna put me in jail for it and maybe beat my head, too. Depend on where I am. See, I know all about that, but I don’t want to let that get into what I’m doin’. I figure that, OK, I’m in this business because I love music. So I can’t afford to let bitterness get into me, but if when you ask me what’s really happenin’, if you get people and sit them down and say, hey, man, let’s cut all the fat outta this.

Get down to the real thing. What is it? This is the real thing I’m tellin’ you now. That’s without bitterness and I ain’t mad. I can afford to tell you that for one reason; you see, thank the Lord, I’m fairly cool about it. My kids ain’t gonna starve unless they bomb the country or somethin’ with nuclear weapons or somethin’. Man, I’m pretty straight, and I can tell you all about both ends of it. I know how it is when you have to use a piece of like cardboard to put your shoes on when you don’t have a slipper spoon, and I know how it is to live in a $200,000 house.

What keeps me from being bitter about this – the reason that this happens is because people who are in power tend to lean toward themselves. It’s the same as a guy who is in a house. He has his own house, he’s got his own, whatever it is, his own family. Well, let’s face it, he may love you, but if it’s somethin’ comin’ up, he’s gonna tend to lean towards – if he can get his own kids in there, he tends to go that way, you understand? I think this is basically what happens in the structure of our society. It’s a capitalistic country, and it’s a white society, and they control. They got the money. They got the airplanes, the bombs, every goddamn thing. You name it, they got it. So therefore, naturally you have, what is it? – 15-20 percent black, you got 80-85 percent white. Fine. So, as a result of that, if you’re not careful, you can become very bitter, because you’ll say, well, why in the world – here I am, and here’s a guy who’ll spend millions of dollars to find a white cat just to imitate me, and he’ll do far better than me. Well, the only thing that I can say that sort of helps me a little bit, that keeps me goin’ – I say two things. First of all, in order for that guy to copy me, he gotta wait ’til I do it first. Now [laughter], the second thing I feel, well, if this is the case, if you take this guy over me and he’s just an imitation of me, then that says to me that I must be pretty damn good. Because I don’t know nobody that you wanna copy that ain’t worth a damn. All right, hello. [Laughter.]