It’s a beautiful tune with a sensitive, thoughtful lyric and a haunting vocal, and unlike most country songs, crammed as they are with hangdog stories and love stuff, it’s perfectly true. Probably most of us recall moments in our lives, good and bad, when a familiar melody fires up a long-dormant synaptic connection.
No single performer brings back more memories than the late Ray Charles.
Probably this is true for many Americans my age, regardless of race, sex, regional background, religious affiliation, or whatever. Artistically, Ray Charles transcended all that was transcendable, and he did it naturally, singing in a rich, gravelly, soulful voice that made you know the lyric was pure truth.
The first Ray Charles song I recall is “What’d I Say.” My family was returning from a visit to Ohio in the late ’50s, the Chevy crawling along the Pennsylvania Turnpike on a dark spring night. We’d left Ohio with two big bags of glazed donuts, and for the first hundred miles or so we’d stuffed our faces with the sticky confections. Thereafter we suffered in a warm, gooey sweetness that permeated the upholstery and eventually our skin.
Just outside Breezewood, the radio picked up the verse: “Hey mama, don’t you treat me wrong/ Come and love your daddy all night long….” It was one of those songs you know is a hit when you hear it playing a mile away.
My sister, brother and I leaned forward in the backseat and stared at the bluish light radiating from the dashboard radio, and my father, who wasn’t a big rock ’n’ roll fan, cranked up the volume. In a few seconds we were all singing along “Tell me what’d I say, tell me what’d I say right now…” over and over.
As Ray Charles’ voice rattled from the cheap speaker, the music cut through the syrupiness, the auditory negating the olfactory. I haven’t eaten a glazed donut since, but I’ve listened to a lot of Ray Charles.
Then there was Christmas 1962, when my parents gave me a fishing rod and a copy of “Ray Charles’ Greatest Hits.” I never used the rod, but I played Ray Charles nonstop for months, until the stylus on the old console Philco was reduced to a nub and the recording sounded as if poor Ray were singing under water.
The quality of the recording didn’t matter; I knew every nuance of every syllable and sang so loud my poor mother threatened to have me committed to the Crownsville State Hospital for the Musically Deranged. I’ve long since traded in piles of vinyl for CDs, but I still own the greatest hits recording. Stashed away in the top of a closet, the frayed liner winks at me whenever I open the door.
During the summer of ’63, I got a job working for a housepainter named, I swear, Tommy Dorsey. Tommy was no big band leader, but he sure enough thought he was Ray Charles. He sang all day long, with a special preference for “Georgia on My Mind” (his wife, a wise woman, had recently left him for another man).
On rainy days when we couldn’t paint outside, we poured Mary Carter Roll Hide into empty Sherwin-Williams cans so Tommy could jack up the charge for materials, and we listened incessantly to Ray Charles on the box. I didn’t much like Tommy — he was a crook and never paid me what I was due — but I loved the music. These days when I hear Ray sing “…no peace I find,” I’m touched with regret — all those peeling clapboards we slapped cheap paint on so Tommy could make a quick buck.
And of course, there are a thousand other memories — some of them unprintable here — that only the voice of Ray Charles can breathe life into. “Ruby,” “Hit the Road Jack,” “Unchain My Heart,” “Busted,” “Your Cheating Heart,” “God Bless America,” — each song is a moment in my life.
My favorite Ray Charles recording has always been “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” I like it when Ray says, “Sing the song, children.”
That’s exactly what I’ve been doing for the last 45 years.
Stephen Smith can be reached at travisses@hotmail.com.
