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Friday, June 11, 2004

Our Loss --- Ray Charles, Living Legend
 

The Southern Music Network family, its affiliates, audience and sponsors, gather together to mourn the inimitable genius of soul, blues and rock & roll who held us together for decades:  Ray Charles – the man, the music and the voice.

It seems like he has been with us forever and, for most of us, he has.  But his 30-year old rendition of “America the Beautiful” was recirculated into popular culture after The Terrible Day, causing him to declaim passionately, “those terrorists got us on our knees?  Where’s that at?”  A man who had many crosses to bear, many burdens to carry, did it all with hope and cheerfulness for all the decades of his life, including those for which we remember his hits.  His graciousness was one quality he never lost – the joy he demonstrated whether soloing on stage or in the studio, or dueting with vocalists and musicians new or old, true or fake, here today or here back when.

The spirit of Ray Charles lives on in his tremendous and prolific body of work, from “Stella by Starlight” to “Ruby” to explorations into Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, dueting with that classy Cleo Laine on “Summertime.”  Another find by Atlantic Record’s Ahmet Ertegun! We take note that even having won just about every award worth collecting over his long career, earning a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and appearing all over the world, Ray maintained his ever-fresh exhilaration in setting free the harmony, thrill and oneness that wonderful music can bring to an audience, uniting its members in thrall of unique artistry.

And let us not forget who comprised his audience:  not just hip us, but young and old, black, white, Latino, Asian, Aussies, Kiwis and Brits, country and bluegrass peeps, rock and rollers, rappers, blues aficionados, keyboard scholars and jest plain folks.  He was a born performer, and damn mo’scoscious at it.  Middle-class viewers of Lifetime TV got to hear him wail and croon every week when they watched “Designing Women,” didn’t they?  Sure, because “Georgia on My Mind,” as big a hit as “Hit the Road Jack” and “What’d I Say,” was the theme song for that show about “southern wimmen who get to talkin’ in a room.”  Viewers who doubtless didn’t remember Ray Charles and the Raylettes from the mid-60s, when he broke our vulnerable hearts with mega-hit “I Can’t Stop Loving You” or got us dancing with “I Got a Woman” (“ooheeee, way ‘cross town, she crazee for me).”  Viewers who might not have felt the wolf at the door howlin’ as ferociously as Brother Ray did when he sang “Busted.”

Ray Charles was an artist who could give Little Richard a run for his money in the “originator” of rock & roll category (“Mess Around” -- complete with barrelhouse piano), though he was also a torch singer on the rarified, aint-many-in-a-century level of Judy Garland and Roy Orbison -- check out “Born to Lose,” my peeps.

A musician’s musician – and as surely as our days are numbered, these musicians do grow rarer every month -- Ray Charles died Thursday, June 10, 2004, at his home in Beverly Hills, California.  He put Georgia on our minds, kept it on the map, and we will miss him.
 

“.. to live in memories of a lonesome ….”
Time and Love, everybody,

Jumpsturdy Klieger
New York City

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