The women would come up to the bandstand and yell, ‘Just let me touch him once!’ It was like he had descended from heaven, a beloved idol and an inspiration to so many of us.” “We were on tour and playing these tobacco barns in the South and the crowd would just be packed in to see him. “Everyone felt like they knew Ray Charles and in a way they did, because he was embodied by his music,” said Ahmet Ertegun, Atlantic Records’ co-founder. The finishing touch was one of the most identifiable, emotive voices in pop music - a gravelly, elastic instrument that could be tearfully plaintive one moment and slyly salacious the next. His trademark dark glasses added to his mystique, and he would lean back from the piano and sway to the music. Sitting at the keyboard in front of his large band and his three shimmying backup singers, the Raelettes, Charles was a commanding stage figure. No one has ever performed at the piano with as much charisma as Ray Charles.”įew would argue that. That’s the way it is with Bob Dylan and Aretha Franklin in their areas. “And as a performer, there is no one you can compare him to, and the distance to whoever is second is immeasurable. “He took the Lord’s music and the devil’s words and make this amalgam they call soul music. “How do you deconstruct genius?” Jerry Wexler, the noted producer and record executive who worked on many of Charles’ recordings for Atlantic Records, said Thursday.
He received the Recording Academy’s lifetime achievement award at the 1987 Grammys. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, part of the institution’s inaugural 10-member class that also included Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, James Brown and Jerry Lee Lewis.
His relatively modest showing on the pop charts - just 12 singles in the Top 10 - fails to reflect his profound influence and stature in the music world. His landmark 1962 album, “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music,” took the twang out of country music, bringing a sophistication and ambition to the genre that opened the door to its modernization. Charles’ last public appearance was on April 30, when the city of Los Angeles designated the singer’s studios on Washington Boulevard a historic landmark.Ĭharles’ recordings from the early 1950s, such as “I’ve Got a Woman,” combined gospel and rhythm and blues to form one of the cornerstones of rock ‘n’ roll and laid the foundation for soul music.
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