Brother Ray: Ray Charles Own Story
by David Ritz
A Must Read
Ray Charles (1930-2004) led one of the most extraordinary lives of any
popular musician. In Brother Ray, he tells his story in an inimitable and
unsparing voice, from the chronicle of his musical development to his
heroin addiction to his tangled romantic life. Overcoming poverty,
blindness, the loss of his parents, and the pervasive racism of the era, Ray
Charles was acclaimed worldwide as a genius by the age of thirty-two. By
combining the influences of gospel, jazz, blues, and country music, he
invented, almost single-handedly, what became known as soul. And
throughout a career spanning more than a half century, Ray Charles
remained in complete control of his life and his music, allowing nobody to
tell him what he could and couldnt do. As the Chicago Sun-Times put it,
Brother Ray is candid, explicit, sometimes embarrassing, often hilarious,
always warm, touching, and deeply human-just like his music.

Personal Review: Brother Ray: Ray Charles Own Story by David
Ritz
Read Ray Charles' profane, outrageously self-revealing "as-told -to"
autobiography, then spin his epochal gospel drenched version of
"America." This is an exemplary lifestory, and proof of the pudding as to
the "why" of American exceptionalism, which came in for much ridicule in
the last election cycle. Brother Ray overcame a succession of childhood
traumas, both staggering and sadly commonplace (poverty in the
segregated south, absent father, witnessing the accidental drowning of his
brother at age 5, blindess, devoted but sickly mother dying when he's still a
kid, 20 years of heroin addiction...); he went on the road as a professional
musician when he was 15 years old; young Quincy Jones, encountering
Ray pre-fame in his late teens said he seemed 100 years old. By 25, he
had single-handedly invented soul music, the fusion of rhythm and blues
with gospel, scandalizing the faithful while roughening pop music with
blues realism in a way no white rock and roller ever managed. By 29, he
had, in Gary Giddins' words, jazz in one pocket (his ace 8-piece hard bop
band, his sides with Milt Jackson, his great album of standards, "Genius")
and R & B in the other pocket. He then confounded expectations by
signing an unprecedented contract with a fledgling label,which gave him
ownership of his masters and complete artistic control, and started cutting
country sides, and selling gazillion copies. He crossed the same racial
divide as Elvis, but from the other direction, a far more audacious move. In
1962, the titan of black music completely upended cultural hierarchies by
singing the hell out of the music of the white southern working class; as he
said, soul, country, its the same damn thing. He also said he would never
be satisified with headlining the Apollo Theater, as all of his African
American peers would be. Ray knew from an early age he could take over
the world, and he did. Black, blind, orphaned, beyond poor, addicted, and
he never seemed to have a moments doubt as to where he would end up.
Proud and thorny, he could make Sinatra's boast of doing it his way, but he
never had the assists of dangerous powerful people and Hollywood that
Frank had -- Ray was alone, and wanted it that way. If he spent the last 35
years of his career coasting, with fitfully inspired moments on record, his
live performances were always committed and stellar. This book is one of
the best log cabin to mansion stories I've ever read, and it has the sting of
truth. Not coincidentally, Ray is self-admittedly a selfish SOB of the first
order, single minded in his pursuit of his art, to the detriment of scores of
women and the childen he begot on them. But his book, like his singing,
cuts though with the ring of truth and authenticity. As other reviewers here
have noted, his co-author blanched about Ray's frankness when he read
the proofs, and Ray instructed him, "Don't change a goddamn word."
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