Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

- General Discussion (https://thetfp.com/tfp/general-discussion/)

- - Ray Charles died... (https://thetfp.com/tfp/general-discussion/58687-ray-charles-died.html)

Ray Charles Dies at Age 73

Absolutely heartbroken...

http://www.dk-studio.com/media/enter...nt/box6pic.jpg

Link

Quote:

BEVERLY HILLS, California (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.

How sad. He was an amazing talent. I will always remember my dad singing "hit the road jack" to me as a child.

Damn. That kinda came out of nowhere and blind sided me. Rest In Peace, Ray. You made the world a better place because you were in it, and that's all any of us can ever really hope for. :(

I knew the day was coming (he wasn't getting any younger) but it still sucks... The man was a musical master.

/needs to go dig up some of his records and give them a listen.

RIP Mr. Charles, thanks for the music.

Damn it.

Ray was one of those people that I always wanted to see in concert but just never thought enough about it when the time came around. He even was scheduled to appear in NYC at BB King's Club sometime this summer, but it turned out that the shows were cancelled anyway due to failing health.

I'm at a loss for words. It's impossible to overemphasize what an influence Ray Charles has been in the music world. His unbelievable piano playing, that unmistakable voice, those unforgettable songs. I know that whenever I think of "America The Beautiful," it's his voice that comes to mind. After 9/11, they played his version on the radio, all across the nation, at the very same moment. I tend to think that patriotic songs err on the cheesy side. But not when Ray's voice was behind it. Every note, every ad-lib - from when he sang "God done shed his grace on thee" to when he answered the line "and crown thy good" with "he told me he would!" I get chills just thinking about it.

Think about "(Night Time Is) The Right Time." You may not think you know this song, but you probably do. The Cosby family sang it at the end of one of their seasons, doing the skit on the staircase for the grandparents. Rudy sang the female "BABY!" part.

Think about "Hallelujah I Love Her So." I plan on having that played during my wedding. The joy in his voice is infectious. Or the exquisite "Georgia On My Mind." Ray made every single note count, and his heart and soul was behind every breath he took.

He enjoyed a renaissance (not that he ever really went away) with the Diet Pepsi "You got the right one baby, uh huh" commercials in the early '90s. Those commercials were insufferable, but even when Ray was hawking soda, you knew he was diggin' it.

My absolute favorite Ray song, although it's hard to pick just one, is "One Mint Julip." Seek it out. It's an instrumental and it's a smokin' piece of jazz/soul.

Even as his health was failing, he vowed to get back on the stage. He showed up at a recent event at the end of April in a wheelchair. Speaking softly into the microphone, he said, "I'm a little weak now, but I'm gonna get stronger." I believed him 100%. And even now, I think the only reason he left us is because he was ready to go.

Rest in Peace, Ray Charles. The music flowed from your heart into the world, and we are so lucky to have been there to accept it. You will never - ever - be forgotten.

wow, g'damn... didn't see that one coming

RIP Ray Charles

if love is blind and God is love, and if Ray Charles is blind and Ray Charles plays the piano

does God play the piano?

Here's an extended article from AP. Really well done.

Quote:

Grammy-Winning crooner Ray Charles dies

Associated Press

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Ray Charles, the Grammy-winning crooner who blended gospel and blues in such crowd-pleasers as "What'd I Say" and 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.

"I was born with music inside me. That's the only explanation I know of," Charles said in his 1978 autobiography, "Brother Ray." "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."

Charles considered Martin Luther King Jr. a friend and once refused to play to segregated audiences in South Africa. But politics didn't take.

He was happiest playing music, smiling and swaying behind the piano as his legs waved in rhythmic joy. His appeal spanned generations: He teamed with such disparate musicians as Willie Nelson, Chaka Khan and Eric Clapton, and appeared in movies including "The Blues Brothers." Pepsi tapped him for TV spots around a simple "uh huh" theme, perhaps playing off the grunts and moans that pepper his songs.

"The way I see it, we're actors, but musical ones," he once told The Associated Press. "We're doing it with notes, and lyrics with notes, telling a story. I can take an audience and get 'em into a frenzy so they'll almost riot, and yet I can sit there so you can almost hear a pin drop."

Charles was no angel. He could be mercurial and his womanizing was legendary. He also struggled with a heroin addiction for nearly 20 years before quitting cold turkey in 1965 after an arrest at the Boston airport. Yet there was a sense of humor about even that — he released both "I Don't Need No Doctor" and "Let's Go Get Stoned" in 1966.

He later became reluctant to talk about the drug use, fearing it would taint how people thought of his work.

"I've known times where I've felt terrible, but once I get to the stage and the band starts with the music, I don't know why but it's like you have pain and take an aspirin, and you don't feel it no more," he once said.

Ray Charles Robinson was born Sept. 23, 1930, in Albany, Ga. His father, Bailey Robinson, was a mechanic and a handyman, and his mother, Aretha, stacked boards in a sawmill. His family moved to Gainesville, Fla., when Charles was an infant.

"Talk about poor," Charles once said. "We were on the bottom of the ladder."

Charles saw his brother drown in the tub his mother used to do laundry when he was about 5 as the family struggled through poverty at the height of the Depression. His sight was gone two years later. Glaucoma is often mentioned as a cause, though Charles said nothing was ever diagnosed. He said his mother never let him wallow in pity.

"When the doctors told her that I was gradually losing my sight, and that I wasn't going to get any better, she started helping me deal with it by showing me how to get around, how to find things," he said in the autobiography. "That made it a little bit easier to deal with."

Charles began dabbling in music at 3, encouraged by a cafe owner who played the piano. The knowledge was basic, but he was that much more prepared for music classes when he was sent away, heartbroken, to the state-supported St. Augustine School for the Deaf and the Blind.

Charles learned to read and write music in Braille, score for big bands and play instruments — lots of them, including trumpet, clarinet, organ, alto sax and the piano.

"Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory," Charles said. "I can sit at my desk and write a whole arrangement in my head and never touch the piano. .. There's no reason for it to come out any different than the way it sounds in my head."

His early influences were myriad: Chopin and Sibelius, country and western stars he heard on the Grand Ole Opry, the powerhouse big bands of Duke Ellington and Count Basie, jazz greats Art Tatum and Artie Shaw.

By the time he was 15 his parents were dead and Charles had graduated from St. Augustine. He wound up playing gigs in black dance halls — the so-called chitlin' circuit — and exposed himself to a variety of music, including hillbilly (he learned to yodel) before moving to Seattle.

He dropped his last name in deference to boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, patterned himself for a time after Nat "King" Cole and formed a group that backed rhythm 'n' blues singer Ruth Brown. It was in Seattle's red light district were he met a young Quincy Jones, showing the future producer and composer how to write music. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

Charles developed quickly in those early days. Atlantic Records purchased his contract from Swingtime Records in 1952, and two years later he recorded "I Got a Woman," a raw mixture of gospel and rhythm 'n' blues, inventing what was later called soul. Soon, he was being called "The Genius" and was playing at Carnegie Hall and the Newport Jazz Festival.

His first big hit was 1959's "What'd I Say," a song built off a simple piano riff with suggestive moaning from the Raeletts. Some U.S. radio stations banned the song, but Charles was on his way to stardom.

Veteran producer Jerry Wexler, who recorded "What'd I Say," said he has worked with only three geniuses in the music business: Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and Charles.

"In each case they brought something new to the table," Wexler told the San Jose Mercury News in 1994. Charles "had this blasphemous idea of taking gospel songs and putting the devil's words to them. ... He can take a gem from Tin Pan Alley or cut to the country, but he brings the same root to it, which is black American music."

Charles released "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Volumes 1 and 2" in the early '60s, a big switch from his gospel work. It included "Born to Lose," "Take These Chains From My Heart (And Set Me Free)" and "I Can't Stop Loving You," some of the biggest hits of his career.

He made it a point to explore each medium he took on. Country sides were sometimes pop-oriented, while fiddle, mandolin, banjo and steel guitar were added to "Wish You Were Here Tonight" in the '80s. Jones even wrote a choral and orchestral work for Charles to perform with the Roanoke, Va., symphony.

Charles' last Grammy came in 1993 for "A Song for You," but he never dropped out of the music scene. He continued to tour and long treasured time for chess. He once told the Los Angeles Times: "I'm not Spassky, but I'll make it interesting for you."

"Music's been around a long time, and there's going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead," he told the Washington Post in 1983. "I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it's a big record, that's the frosting on the cake, but music's the main meal."

Ray Charles died...

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...obit_charles_8

Quote:

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Ray Charles (news), the Grammy-winning crooner who blended gospel and blues in such crowd-pleasers as "What'd I Say" and 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

It's a damn shame. Ray Charles was as good a man as you could find. Between him and Reagan, that's two. I wonder who will complete the trifecta...

I just heard it on CNN. He was one of the coolest musicians ever.

RIP Ray Ray

Sad news. the man was an amazing artist. :(

...a great sensitive man.
his life is an amazing tale:

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

He was one of my favorite musicians. Such amazing talent. I think my favorite song is 'You Don't Know Me'.

I'd never read his bio before, he really really had a rough life in his early years. Guess that's where his great soul essence sprang from.

I've been kicking myself for the last hour or so, since I heard. I had the chance to see him perform last July, and blew it off. :(

Wow.... This is the first I have heard.... It makes me sad, to hear this. I just saw him on tv the othere day....

I bet they're going crazy at http://www.stiffs.com

Quote:

My absolute favorite Ray song, although it's hard to pick just one, is "One Mint Julip." Seek it out. It's an instrumental and it's a smokin' piece of jazz/soul.

Quadro, you are so right about that song. You just have to move when you hear it and then comes that one line you just can't wait to sing: "just a little bit of soul now..."

All my fav R&B singers are dead now except for Aretha Franklin. Hope she's not going anytime soon.

Every once in a while, we all take a step back and remember a great memory of someone famous who has touched us, sometimes personally, mostly anonimously, but regardless we are humbled.

I thank Ray Charles for being Ray Charles. What a gift to the world.

That's sad indeed.
You keep the angels in tune, Ray.

R.I.P.

That is who I am going to remember on Friday.

I'll miss you, Ray.

R.I.P., he was a great musician.

Fuck... Rest In Peace brother Ray. You right, Ray Charles. Yes, you right.

Very sad to hear. "Georgia on my mind" in my head.

Goodnight Ray, you'll be missed.

RIP ray, please take little richard with you.

Cool guy and it's definetly sad he's gone but his music will make him eternal.
personally though I''ll always remember him for his scene in Blues Brothers.
http://www.photobucket.com/albums/09...evil/raybb.jpg
Now go on get!

Some RC quotes from yahoo:

"What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man." — (Los Angeles Times, 1986)
___

"I never considered myself part of rock 'n' roll. My stuff was more adult. It was more difficult for teenagers to relate to; my stuff was filled with more despair than anything you'd associate with rock 'n' roll. Since I couldn't see people dancing, I didn't write jitterbugs or twists. I wrote rhythms that moved me. My style requires pure heart singing." — From his 1978 autobiography "Brother Ray."
___

"When I started to sing like myself — as opposed to imitating Nat Cole, which I had done for a while — when I started singing like Ray Charles, it had this spiritual and churchy, this religious or gospel sound. It had this holiness and preachy tone to it. It was very controversial. I got a lot of criticism for it." — (San Jose Mercury News, 1994)
___

"Do it right or don't do it at all. That comes from my mom. If there's something I want to do, I'm one of those people that won't be satisfied until I get it done. If I'm trying to sing something and I can't get it, I'm going to keep at it until I get where I want it." Charles (Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale, 1998)
___

"The fact of the matter is, you don't give up what's natural. Anything I've fantasized about, I've done." — (Los Angeles Times, 1989)
___

"Music's been around a long time, and there's going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it's a big record, that's the frosting on the cake, but music's the main meal." — (The Washington Post, 1983)
___

"You ask me what I'd like to do that I haven't done and I say 'Nothin'!' I haven't any mountains to climb or oceans to swim. I've been an extremely blessed individual. ... I'm not clamorin' for more trinkets. If I were to die tomorrow, I could say I've had a good life." — (Los Angeles Times, 1986)

RIP

Thats too bad. RIP. :(

Damn man, that's just not right..

Hope he's jammin in heaven, he's got lots of good company up there!

rock on brother Ray!

See ya Ray. :(

/Watch out for the law of threes.

Ok, maybe its just me.

but I am PISSED OFF at Cnn.com

This awesome legend of a man dies, long after Mr.Reagan (in a news sense), and what does CNN do?

They put a link in about size 10 font saying "Related news"

WHAT THE FUCK?

sry.. but I am either moody tonight, or just correct in my view.

back to the topic, we will all miss him. :(

Superbelt I was about to say that exact thing.

Beat me to it.

RIP

Wow I'm shocked. Ray was a legend.

Quote:

Originally posted by Bill O'Rights
Damn. That kinda came out of nowhere and blind sided me.

Am I evil for chuckling at this? :)

Anyways, a great music legend died today. Very said.

Rest in Peace, Brother Ray.

:(

Quote:

Originally posted by Tophat665
That is who I am going to remember on Friday.

I'll miss you, Ray.

Here here!

Let me just say...

I have met 4 geniuses in my life, and three of them are now dead:

Dylan, Zevon, Cash, and Charles.

This has been one hell of a year for music. RIP!

"I didn't see that one coming"