BIG RAY: In the universal companionship of the blind,
Ray Charles is king

by Jim ("Thank ya. Thank ya verruh much.") Kelton

NOTE: The views expressed herein are those of the writer, not necessarily those of the publisher or other staff.

Everybody else was searching for it but Ray flat had it. Trouble was he ran out of dope.

There is a tendency to associate Ray Charles with rock ‘n’ roll but if there’s actually any connection there it’s that Ray simply occupied the same time frame as the rock ‘n’ rollers. There is an original quality about him and his music that sets him apart from every other performer of his generation.

Dizzy Gillespie, bebop’s Coup de Ville, disparaged Louis Armstrong’s oeuvre as "plantation music." Louis said bebop was just what jazz players had been doing backstage for eons and that this was being exploited a bit cynically by hipsters like Diz. Finally, I saw a showdown (on a David Frost TV program, strangely enough) between Diz and Louis in which they had a trumpet duel, what the blues guys used to call a headcutting contest, to determine the victor in the matter. Louis blew bebop rings around Gillespie, who, beaten fair and square, walked offstage humiliated. That was Louis’ power. He knew what he was talking about.

Big Ray, the totemic epitome of "plantation music," demonstrated just how refined that music could be. There’s no excess in Ray’s best performances. Personally, he was a hardass penny-pinching pimp. That’s what the music business does to people. It reduces them to their gifts (if they have any) and then chops them up and sells them like baloney.

Ray was anything but baloney. He was sliced thin, packaged and retailed but he never really fell from the grace of what everyone used to regard as his "genius." Pop critics throw around a lot of phrases like "created his own language" loosely. Ray really did invent a style that was unprecedented. It was part jazz, part blues, part country, part gospel, part swing, part sweet Dixieland, part rap (rap being nothing essentially new) and part rock ‘n’ roll. He just pulled everything together with a free-spirited sweep that defied all business logic and yet was the most distinguished musical expression of his era.

Ray had the touch. He admired Nat "King" Cole. It’s hard to imagine a classier act to assimilate (listen to Cole’s piano-playing, filling in around his own impeccable vocals). Ray also liked Basie (the big band on "One Mint Julep" includes some veterans of Basie’s group) and Hank Snow and Hoagie Carmichael. You can bet your ass he was hip to Armstrong and Ellington and Hank Williams, too.

The point is that Ray created a distinctive, disciplined, natural music that truly represented a past with connections to authentic experience. Yet he was utterly singular. There’s no mistaking the sound of Ray Charles. He comes off like he was part of the original universe. He did then. He does now.

Big Ray, who was not only always himself but always Himself in Media, was cool. Ray influenced rock ‘n’ roll, not vice versa, and he was one of its prominent figures – maybe its most prominent figure – not a precursor of it, as a contemporary. How sweet is that?

Everybody said they wanted to be Elvis but everybody knew that Elvis was a sideshow for Ray. Elvis didn’t perform at the Newport Jazz Festival … and wow ‘em. Jerry Lee Lewis (or the millions of other virtuosos who played it) didn’t come up with "What’d I Say." Little Richard didn’t understand jazz on a par with Ray, who always had one of the most dynamic, versatile bands in jazz/R&B history working with him (missing a note in that unit cost the offender hard cash).

It’s amazing what a little prestige will do. After my old friend Fast-Talkin’ Charlie was whacked by his first stroke, I was seeing him off to New York at the airport in Seattle. Charlie was in a wheelchair, denying anything significant whatsoever had occurred. As we were sitting at the boarding gate, a couple of stewardesses came over and made a fuss over Charlie (as they should have – he was mortally wounded and he knew it; plus, he was flying first-class). In any event, after the young women departed, Charlie looked up at me and said, "I always attract the pretty ones." Well, ugly as he was (and he was a skinny Irish mug with, Marianne Faithfull said, a cauliflower nose), he deserved that attention, I thought. He was dying. So, just to jism up the situation I went over to one of the stewardesses and said, "Take care of this guy. He used to be the Rolling Stones’ agent." Another stewardess asked, "What’d he say?" The first stewardess said, "He said, ‘That guy used to be the Rolling Stones’ agent.’" Word spread quickly among the crew. In a matter of moments, four stewardesses were tending to Charlie and one of them was down on her knees whispering in his ear. Presently, Charlie boarded the plane accompanied by one stewardess pushing his wheelchair and three more playing with his hat and his carry-on and his porno magazines. I like to remember him that way.

Charlie was in truth a lying sonofabitch who would do practically anything (including murder) to get what he wanted. But he had that jazz, that grease that comes from 50 years of trying to conduct yourself acceptably around people like Prince Charles, U Thant, Anwar Sadat and Mick Jagger. I mentioned John Lennon and Sadat to him once, saying something about how they were both shot to death, and Charlie said, "They always know." By that he meant, I think (Charlie was, it’s best to remember, the leading bullshit artist on earth – that was his job), that those who are marked for violent death can sense its approach.

There was nothing like that around Ray Charles. He was life itself. He was Quinn the Eskimo. He was Zorba to everybody else’s Greek. Maybe I praise him too much. In a sense, he was just another musician. If that’s true, however, then Bob Marley is just another guitar player (albeit one who is grinning at the whities and thinking, "I secretly hate you, mon").

Charlie Parker listened to some dumb bastard lecture him bluntly about drugs once in New York and Parker subsequently replied, "Wait’ll everybody steals your music and calls it a style and you can’t make a livin’ and then you tell me about dope." Ray Charles was hip to that action. He initially used dope to dupe the industry guys who preferred things the other way around. They got him anyway, though. They had him busted when he got too uppity. They made it clear to him that he would do serious prison time if he ever fucked with heroin again. They busted the players in his band (most of them went to prison, I guess – where else were they for five-to-ten years before resurfacing miraculously?). They broke Ray Charles the same way they break everybody …by finding out what they need most and depriving them of it.

Nevertheless, Ray survived. Like B.B. King said, The Man took away his music and his instrument and his freedom to use both but The Man never took away his voice.

As Charlie used to say in his phony Irish accent (he was really from Liverpool) when he was pissed off about something, "O, God bless ‘em."

And, in another way entirely, I say God bless Ray.