Ray Charles...the movie, his music....

[Plantman]

I never really was into his music, perhaps because he wasn't mainstream when I was growing up.

With the recent movie Ray, I have become quite a fan of his.

The man was a musical genius sho could sing, write, produce gospel, R&B, country, soul, orchestra etc....and was critically aclaimed in all of those different genres.

I am listening to his most recent album, "Genius loves company as I type" and it is awesome.

Anyone else like Mr Charles?

[MTI]

Apparently the recording engineer that took home some Grammy Awards for "Genius Loves Company" also took home a whole bunch of master tapes . . . LAPD, armed with a warrant, searched his house and found hundreds of Ray Charles' master tapes, including the one for "Georgia On My Mind" at the house, and missing from the climate controlled "vault" that Ray had installed for their safekeeping at his company headquarters.

I should first state that I am 1. white 2. 22 years old 3. I live in a C'Ville Virginia which has a mixture of Southern and Northern influences so that you can stereotype my perspective all you want. At the University of Virginia I would say that the common bond between students of no sleep and class work tends to overwhelm any alliances to race or nationality but in the community at large racism is much more rampant. Poor black and white people are very segregated (I think mutually) by neighborhood.

Watching the film I was struck by several things:

There was a very even mixture of white and black people in the audience (both in quantity and spatially) which is sort of abnormal because usually there are quite a few more white people in the theater. I thought that it was very nice to just observe how this affected the dynamic of the room. I felt that in a way it was a testament to Ray because he was able to draw people together like that through out his life.

In the film there where several scenes depicting race issues which I felt where done in a very restrained way. I assume that the reason was that the filmmaker was trying to focus on Ray's contributions to music and not rock the boat so much that it diverted attention from that. I remember a scene where Ray was getting on his first bus ride and the bus driver helping him but yet there was this sign that said something to the effect, "Colored people sit at the back of the bus" (that Ray couldn’t see), and how I was surrounded by older black people that actually experienced this. There were jokes that poked fun at scenarios like this which were funny but I couldn’t get the idea out of my head that I was sitting next to people that were/are harmed by situations like this.

My favorite scene was when they played through all their songs and finished early so that they had to improvise for the next 10-15 minutes. It was absolutely my favorite song from the movie. I did not know that so much of Ray Charles’ life involved drugs and it is incredible that he was able to keep things together musically and as a person as well as he did. The character that I saw portrayed on screen was Ray Charles and I was shocked at the end of the film when Jamie Foxx was revealed.

[Plantman]

Originally Posted by laurencekarl

I should first state that I am 1. white 2. 22 years old 3. I live in a C'Ville Virginia which has a mixture of Southern and Northern influences so that you can stereotype my perspective all you want. At the University of Virginia I would say that the common bond between students of no sleep and class work tends to overwhelm any alliances to race or nationality but in the community at large racism is much more rampant. Poor black and white people are very segregated (I think mutually) by neighborhood.

Watching the film I was struck by several things:

There was a very even mixture of white and black people in the audience (both in quantity and spatially) which is sort of abnormal because usually there are quite a few more white people in the theater. I thought that it was very nice to just observe how this affected the dynamic of the room. I felt that in a way it was a testament to Ray because he was able to draw people together like that through out his life.

In the film there where several scenes depicting race issues which I felt where done in a very restrained way. I assume that the reason was that the filmmaker was trying to focus on Ray's contributions to music and not rock the boat so much that it diverted attention from that. I remember a scene where Ray was getting on his first bus ride and the bus driver helping him but yet there was this sign that said something to the effect, "Colored people sit at the back of the bus" (that Ray couldn’t see), and how I was surrounded by older black people that actually experienced this. There were jokes that poked fun at scenarios like this which were funny but I couldn’t get the idea out of my head that I was sitting next to people that were/are harmed by situations like this.

My favorite scene was when they played through all their songs and finished early so that they had to improvise for the next 10-15 minutes. It was absolutely my favorite song from the movie. I did not know that so much of Ray Charles’ life involved drugs and it is incredible that he was able to keep things together musically and as a person as well as he did. The character that I saw portrayed on screen was Ray Charles and I was shocked at the end of the film when Jamie Foxx was revealed.

In the scene you refer to about them playing thru their songs quickly, they stopped playing because ray and bighead were jonesing for some h and wanted to get off, he was threatened with lack of payment and proceeded to do 20 minutes of a song no one , not even his bandmates knew. I forgot the song, but it was huge.

Did you know he won several grammys in the 60's for country music? i was totally unaware. His family runs a site, raycharles.com which is pretty cool. Check it out.

[Plantman]

Originally Posted by MTI

Apparently the recording engineer that took home some Grammy Awards for "Genius Loves Company" also took home a whole bunch of master tapes . . . LAPD, armed with a warrant, searched his house and found hundreds of Ray Charles' master tapes, including the one for "Georgia On My Mind" at the house, and missing from the climate controlled "vault" that Ray had installed for their safekeeping at his company headquarters.

Did you know he was the first artist to demand his master recordings be returned to him? Pretty sharp businessman as well.