posted on June 10, 2004 07:10:07 PM new
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) - Ray Charles, the Grammy-winning crooner who blended gospel and blues in such crowd-pleasers as ``What'd I Say'' and heartfelt ballads like ``Georgia on My Mind,'' died Thursday, a spokesman said. He was 73.
Charles died at his Beverly Hills home surrounded by family and friends, said spokesman Jerry Digney.
Charles last public appearance was alongside Clint Eastwood on April 30, when the city of Los Angeles designated the singer's studios, built 40 years ago in central Los Angeles, as a historic landmark.
Blind by age 7 and an orphan at 15, Charles spent his life shattering any notion of musical boundaries and defying easy definition. A gifted pianist and saxophonist, he dabbled in country, jazz, big band and blues, and put his stamp on it all with a deep, warm voice roughened by heartbreak from a hardscrabble childhood in the segregated South.
`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,'' singer Van Morrison told Rolling Stone magazine in April.
Charles won nine of his 12 Grammy Awards between 1960 and 1966, including the best R&B recording three consecutive years (``Hit the Road Jack,'' ``I Can't Stop Loving You'' and ``Busted'').
His versions of other songs are also well known, including ``Makin' Whoopee'' and a stirring ``America the Beautiful.'' Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell wrote ``Georgia on My Mind'' in 1931 but it didn't become Georgia's official state song until 1979, long after Charles turned it into an American standard.
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If it's really "common" sense, why do so few people actually have it?
posted on June 11, 2004 03:36:03 PM new
A handicapped black man that made it without government help? How scandalous! The NAALCP must be outraged! There has to be government policy enacted to keep this from happening again! Just think of how much greater he could have been if he had not been cruelly ignored by the Reagan administration and thrown out on the street! Why, he could have achieved acclaim greater than.... greater than....well, Maplethorpe!!
Obviously, he was blind to his victimization, otherwise he wouldn't have smiled so much.
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You know...the best way to defeat a liberal is to let them speak.
posted on June 11, 2004 06:02:25 PM new
Everytime I think of Ray Charles, I remember an interview (from ages ago) with one of his background singers. they were know as the Raylettes. She said to be a Raylette, you had to let Ray . . .
He was a great entertainer...
