Why Ray Charles Matters

When asked by a magazine in the early 60's about his opinions on the direction of jazz, Ralph Ellison responded by saying "I'd rather listen to Ray Charles". To Ellison, "If you peel back those layers of blues, Charles has much more complexity in there than anybody suspects". It was taken as a surprising comment by jazz critics then but now, to many people with a grasp of black history, the comparison seems obvious.

Both men’s work showcased the democratic ethos of American art as well as its democratic potential. Ellison wrestled with such literary gods as Joyce, Dostoevsky and Hemingway and came out formidably in Invisible Man, which is on the short list of great American novels of nearly everyone who considers themselves literate. Charles brought a great deal of the beauty of black music to the world, all the while molding pop in his own image by fusing every single solitary genre outside of polka, gangsta rap and death metal. So its somewhat of an ironic symmetry that both men died 10 years apart, Ellison in New York in 1994 and Charles last year in his LA home. As well as the death of a titan of music titans, Charles’ passing closed a chapter in American history in which, through black music, the nation grasped and acquainted itself with an important part of it’s moral fiber.

Out of the many things that have been said about Ray Charles over the past year , I found one that hasn’t been mentioned. Which is that to understand the enormity of Charles’ importance to American music, you have to understand the full range, swoop and nuance of gospel music, the genre that Charles drew the most inspiration from. People have always marveled at the protean talents of Charles, Aretha Franklin and other soul stars, but the nexus of their power came from a genre that was built on democratic voices of necessity, that necessity being the middle passage. Here is where the legacy of slavery plays a huge part. Because Slave owners had no way of delineating between tribes and dialects, music was a way for black people to communicate. We didn’t sing gospel music out of a need for escapism, we sang gospel in order to live. Every single detail of gospel relates back to the horrors of slavery, from the otherworldly metaphysics of the spirituals to the double entendres of work songs, where blacks expressed themselves away from whites understanding. In spirituals and work songs, you hear tales of deep sorrow, horror, pain and anguish about life in relation to one of Americas two greatest crimes against humanity.( the other being how it treated Native Americans) What you also hear is unbridled joy, bravery, grace, power and a great deal of America's backbone. In my opinion the most overwhelmingly beautiful aspect of gospel is that it’s practitioners could use, appreciate and adapt the musical customs of their oppressors and create an art form which moved those same oppressors so much they considered it part of their own history.

What so many people don’t understand is that before Charles, a great deal of this music wasn’t known to the world, and denied to millions of Americans via the destructive nature of racial prejudice. The Reverend Thomas Dorsey, an old bluesman who was doing R. Kelly when R. Kelly was a twinkle in his grandaddy’s eye( his single " It's tight like that" sold 7 million copies), founded modern gospel in the early 30’s by fusing the spirituals and work songs with Blues and jazz musical structures. Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the Clara Ward singers earned iconic status with each of their million selling 45's. But it was Charles, a walking musical encyclopedia built on the rudiments of gospels fundamentals, who brought it to a world by fusing it with secular themes. When you look at Ray's art, you have to start with his voice, that unmistakably original acid on velvet mid range growl which could rise to a joyously shrieking falsetto that sounded like the living embodiment of a lust for life, then sink to a hoarse baritone that sounded straight out of the exact place between purgatory and hell. That voice was part preacher, part field hollerer, part love man, part con man, part blues man, part dead man, whose vocal leaps were, to paraphrase Ellison's description of Jackson,

Article Author: Robert Lashley

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