Ray Charles

[Guest]

Dead.

Sucks.

 

[Guest]

Aw. Great masculine voice, always soothed. P.

 

[cloudy]

For once, CV, I agree with you. It does suck.

 

[Guest]

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Sigh.
A fine musician and man.
Happy to have lived in his lifetime.

 

[BlackSnake]

I know when I hear his music again I will get chills

 

[Guest]

but we'll always have his music.

You are right.

He lived a full life.

 

[English Lady]

Aww really?

Yup that sucks.

 

[orangeangel]

yes sad news

 

[McKenna]

.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

 

[lucky-E-leven]

 

[Wicked-N-Erotic]

I agree, really bad news.
What A Wonderful World was my favorite song, no other version was as good as his.

 

[shereads]

Maybe he can see now.

I'll think of him that way - amazed, seeing color and light with the power of his music. He's wearing an enormous smile.

 

[shereads]

A message from Ray:

http://www.raycharles.com/welcome.htm

 

[smutpen]

A sad day.

One of the true great ones has passed.

He will not be forgotten.
His music will live on, as will his influence.

 

[Guest]

Re: Re: Ray Charles

Maybe he can see now.

I'll think of him that way - amazed, seeing color and light with the power of his music. He's wearing an enormous smile.

That is a beautiful thought.

I love What a Wonderful World. It's one of those incredible songs; you just close your eyes and smile and let his voice pour all over your body.

And his version of America the Beautiful gives me chills and moves me to tears.

 

[shereads]

I've been so many places in my life and time

I've sung a lot of songs I've made some bad rhyme

I've acted out my love in stages

With ten thousand people watching

But we're alone now and I'm singing this song for you



I know your image of me is what I hope to be

I've treated you unkindly but darlin' can't you see

There's no one more important to me

Darlin' can't you please see through me

Cause we're alone now and I'm singing this song for you



You taught me precious secrets of the truth withholding nothing

You came out in front and I was hiding

But now I'm so much better and if my words don't come together

Listen to the melody cause my love is in there hiding



I love you in a place where there's no space or time

I love you for in my life you are a friend of mine

And when my life is over remember when we were together

We were alone and I was singing this song for you

We were alone and I was singing this song for you





Leon Russell wrote this, but Ray Charles made it his. And thank God for that, because Leon Russell's voice makes my eyes water. This isn't his most famous recording - I think the Carpenters had a hit with it - but it's my favorite.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

It was "What I Say" that opened the world's ears to the power of rock 'n'roll.

Ray's death leaves us with only one of the original architects of rock: Richard Penniman, aka Little Richard.

---dr.M.

 

[shereads]

It was "What I Say" that opened the world's ears to the power of rock 'n'roll.

I'll always remember him for an interview on NPR where he was asked what he thought of Elvis.

He snorted and said, "Hmph. 'King' of rock and roll! Black musicians was swinging their hips and being run out of town before Elvis was born. 'King' of what?"

 

[shereads]

"I was born with music inside me. That's the only explanation I know of."

"Music was one of my parts... Like my blood. It was a force already with me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me - like food or water."

"Music is nothing separate from me. It is me... You'd have to remove the music surgically."

"If someone besides a black ever sings the real gut bucket blues, it'll be a Jew. We both know what it's like to be someone else's footstool."

"Early on, I decided that if I was going to shoot craps on anyone's philosophy, I was putting my money on Martin Luther King Jr."

"I never learned to stop at the skin. If I looked at a man or a woman, I wanted to see inside. Being distracted by shading or coloring is stupid. It gets in the way. It's something I just can't see."

 

[Pornofan420]

Dreamed about Ray Charles last night
And he could see just fine, you know
I asked him for a lullaby he said
"Honey, I don't sing no more"

He said "Since I got my eyesight back
My voice has just deserted me
No Georgia on my mind no more
I stay in bed with MTV"

Then he took his glasses off and
I could look inside his head
Flashing like a thunderstorm
I saw a shining spider web

Dreamed about Ray Charles last night
He took me flying in the air
Showed me my own spider webs
He said "Honey, you had best take care"

"The world is made of spider webs
The threads are stuck to me and you
Carefull what you're wishing for
'Cause when you gain you just might lose"

When you're feeling lonely
When you're hiding in your bed
Don't forget your string of pearls
Don't forget your spider web

And when I go to sleep tonight
Don't let me dream of Brother Ray
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad he sees
Just like him best the other way

-Joan Osbourne, Spider Web

R.I.P., Brother Ray. You will be missed.

 

[Guest]

The beginning of a Salon.com article. - P.
--------
The genius hits the road - Remembering Ray Charles as a man who sang to the soul of America, played the piano like it was a woman, and got us all to joyously shake our thing. By Charles Taylor

He starts with the second verse, the one most people don't even know. Ray Charles' 1972 version of "America the Beautiful" begins with these words:

O beautiful for heroes proved
in liberating strife
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life

America, America
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine

Think about what that reordering does, what it means to hear those words before the familiar "O beautiful, for spacious skies ..." Beginning with images of sacrifice and death, then moving on to a prayer that asks -- with no guarantee of being answered -- that those sacrifices not be in vain, Ray Charles implies that America must earn the verse that follows.

"And you know when I was in school we used to sing it something like this," he says before beginning the words everybody knows. And so the purple mountains' majesty above the fruited plains are introduced as a legend we hear as children. They are not, in this version, God's bounty there for our taking, but the reward of a collective dream, a dream all the sweeter, all the more worth working toward because it will never fully be realized. God may or may not reward that striving, but as Charles sings it, the striving is where the concrete beauty of the country lies.

"America the Beautiful" is the least boastful of patriotic songs, and even so, Ray Charles' version teaches it a new humility. That Charles died -- yesterday, at 73, of complications of liver disease -- in the same week that saw the death of Ronald Reagan reminds you that Charles performed that song at the Republican Convention that nominated Reagan for a second term in 1984. And so what? That performance didn't make the song a lie. In some ways it was the best test the song could have. Could it be sung at that time in that place and not be co-opted, could it stand for something bigger than the circumstances, bigger even than the man who sang it?

 

[Clare Quilty]

This was a great American whom I can mourn in good conscience. Of course, I reserve the right to amend this epithet should it come out in the future that Ray Charles was a racist war-mongering enemy of the working man.

 

[Belegon]

I have always loved Ray's music and that won't end.

I'll miss you Ray. We never met, but we shared some great times and I will always regret that I never got to see you play live.

It's already been mentioned that perhaps you can see now. Well the next time you hear yourself, look at the people listening and look at the way their eyes crinkle at the edges and how they can't help but smile.

You did your part to make this a better world Ray. Thanks.