"His sound was stunning -- it was the blues, it was R&B, it was gospel, it was swing -- it was all the stuff I was listening to before that but rolled into one amazing, soulful thing."
| A quote from musician Van Morrison in The Associated Press (via Washington Post) article "Musician Ray Charles Dies at 73"
[...] His "I Got A Woman", is widely considered to be the key that opened the door for a crossover of the black musical heritage into the white American musical mainstream.
By taking the traditional gospel "My Jesus Is All The World To Me", and adding secular lyrics, Charles came up with a song that, though not a chart hit, was popular on both sides of the racial divide in 1954.
"For blacks it served as unabashed celebration of negritude without religion; to whites it opened doors that had always been shut," said Peter Guralnick, a music writer and historian. [...]
| That's from Steve James' Reuters article "Ray Charles helped bring black music to world"
"In those days, we would play dances, not concerts like we do now. You know, you play those dances from 9:00 to 1:00. Well, anyway, one night after intermission, we had played everything I could think of and still had about ten more minutes to go. And I said, 'Oh man, what am I going to do?' So, I told the guys in the band, 'I don't know what this is, guys, but just follow me.' And I told the girls, I said, 'Whatever I say, you say. Just repeat after me.' And I just went (sounds) and (they) went crazy on the dance floor ... So, the next night, I said I'm going to try this again ... And sure enough, when I started playing it ... it grabbed people ... I just improvised. I made up verses on the spot."
| That's a quote from an interview (RealAudio dialup or broadband, or read a transcript in PDF format) by Camille O. Cosby, co-founder of the National Visionary Leadership Project, in Los Angeles on October 16, 2002
Newsday has an autobiography excerpt
There's also the Georgia Encyclopedia's entry
posted in articles on June 10, 2004 1:16 PM | t (1)
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