Play Ray Charles In A Movie example essay topic

Ray Charles The Life and Legacy of a Genius Ray Charles was a revolutionary pianist and a soul singer who helped shape the sound of rhythm and blues. He brought a soulful sound to everything from country music to pop standards to "God Bless America". His birth name was Ray Charles Robinson, but he shortened it when he entered show business to avoid confusion with the famous boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. I chose Ray Charles as the topic for my paper after seeing the movie Ray.

After viewing this film I realized that there was a lot of interesting information about Ray Charles that I had never heard about. Therefore, the focus of my paper is to learn who Ray Charles really was and to discuss his life and achievements. The Early Years Ray Charles was born in Albany, Georgia. Around the age of five, Charles began to go blind and by age seven he was totally blind. I was shocked when I learned this information because I had always thought that Ray Charles was blind from birth.

Although many are not certain to the exact reasons as to why Charles went blind, it was believed to be the result of glaucoma. Just before his eyes began to fail him, he had seen his younger brother, George, drown in a washtub. This part of his life was well portrayed in the movie Ray. Ray states, "We were out in the backyard one day while my mom was in the house ironing some clothes. We were playing by a huge metal washtub full of water. And we were having gun the way boys do, pushing and jostling each other around.

Now, I never did know just how it happened, but my brother somehow tilted over the rim of this tub and fell down, slid down into the water and slipped under. At first I thought he was still playing, but it finally dawned on me that he wasn't moving. He wasn't reacting. I tried to pull him out of the water, but by that time his clothes had gotten soaked through with water and he was just too heavy for me. So I ran in and got my mom, and she raced out back and snatched him out of the tub. She shook him, and breathed into his mouth, and pumped his little stomach, but it was too late".

(Internet source, 1) Witnessing his brother drown also had a serious effect on him in his later years. Young Ray Charles attended school at the St. Augustine School for the deaf and blind in St. Augustine, Florida as a charity case. While there he learned how to read Braille and to write music and play various instruments. After leaving school, Charles began working as a musician in Florida. After saving some money he eventually moved to Seattle, Washington in 1947. During this time he started recording and achieved his first hit song in 1951.

The song was titled "Baby, Let Me Hold Your Hand". When Charles first began singing many felt as though his sound and piano playing resembled those of Nat King Cole and Charles Brown. Ray was quoted saying, "When I started to sing like myself - as opposed to imitating Nat Cole, which I had done for a while - when I started singing like Ray Charles, it had this spiritual and churchy, this religious or gospel sound. It had this holiness and preachy tone to it.

It was very controversial. I got a lot of criticism for it". - (San Jose Mercury News, 1994) Charles soon became more innovative when he realized that his first recordings were only skillful imitations of his heroes. After joining Atlantic Records, Charles's sound became more and more original and found breaking. He took many tunes from gospel music and put them to secular lyrics performed in front of a jazz lineup playing R&B with exceptionally tight arrangements. He sometimes even added a country music feel to some of his arrangements for example in his version of Hank Snow's "I'm Moving On".

The Middle Years "Do it right or don't do it at all. That comes from my mom. If there's something I want to do, I'm one of those people that won't be satisfied until I get it done. If I'm trying to sing something and I can't get it, I'm going to keep at it until I get it where I want it". - (Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, 1998) This quotation from Ray Charles basically sums up the middle years of his life. Hits, hits, and more surrounded the middle years of Ray Charles's life.

His first hit in this mode was "Mess Around", which was based on the 1929 classic "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" by Pinetop Smith. He had another hit with the rap like urban jive of "It Should Have Been Me". His career went into high gear with the gospel drive of "I Got A Woman" in 1955. The rest of his next few hit records were, "This Little Girl of Mine,"Drown in my Own Tears,"Hallelujah I Love Her So", and "Lonely Avenue". Half of these songs were gospel songs converted with secular lyrics and the other half were from blues ballads. Charles was criticized for singing gospel songs with secular lyrics but this did not stop him.

There is a long tradition of putting religious lyrics to popular songs and vice versa. For example, Thomas A Dorsey, one of the founders of gospel music also had a significant career in secular music. Little Richard and Solomon Burke also moved freely between the two styles. Ray Charles's fame and success began to grow. After an appearance at the New Post Jazz Festival he achieved mainstream success with " (The Night Time is) The Right Time" and his signature song, "What'd I Say".

The essence of this phase in his career can be heard on his live album, Ray Charles in Person. This album was recorded before a mostly African American audience in Atlanta in 1958. This album also features the first public performance of "What'd I say". It broke out as a hit in Atlanta from the tape, months before it was recorded in the studio in a two-part version with better devotion. By this time Charles had already begun to go beyond the limits of his blues-gospel style while still at Atlantic. It was from this point on that people began to call him The Genius.

He recorded with large orchestras and with jazz artists like Milt Jackson and even made his first country music cover with Hank Snow's "I'm Movin On". And with that song he did move on, he moved right on to ABC records. At ABC, Charles had a great deal of control over his music. This control helped him to broaden his approach, not on experimental side projects, but with "out and out" pop music, resulting in hits such as "Unchain My Heart" and "Hit the Road Jack", which may I add is a personal favorite of mine. In 1962, Charles surprised his new, broad audience with his landmark album Modern Sounds in Country Western Music, which included the numbers "I cant's Stop Loving You", and "You Don't Know Me", This was followed by a series of hits which included the numbers "You are My Sunshine,"Crying Time,"Busted", and "Take these Chains From My Heart". During all this time while Ray's life seemed to be flourishing with greatness, it was from the movie Ray that I learned he was struggling with a drug addiction.

It didn't seem to stop Ray until 1965. In 1965, Charles was arrested for possession of heroin but avoided jail time after kicking the habit in a clinic in Los Angeles. He spent a year on parole after this. It is kind of funny and some what ironic that during this time that he was on parole for drugs he defiantly released Ashford and Simpson's, "Lets Get Stoned" in 1966. After the 1960's, Charles's releases have been hit or miss with some massive hits and critically acclaimed work and some music that has been dismissed as unoriginal and dull.

He concentrated largely on live performances. Soon after Charles dropped another hit entitled "Georgia on My Mind", which was a Hoag y Carmichael song originally written for a girl named Georgia. This song was such a hit that it was soon proclaimed the state song of Georgia. Charles even performed it on the floor of the state legislature. This was definitely a stop in the right direction for a black man.

This was definitely a step in the right direction for a black man. Charles also had success with his unique version of "America the Beautiful". At this time in his life Charles was reaching a very high status and in 1980 he gave a musical cameo appearance in The Blues Brothers. The Later Years Charles's later years were during the times of the civil rights movement and apartheid in South Africa.

Despite his support of Martin Luther King Jr., in the 1960's and his support for the civil rights movement Charles courted controversy when he toured South Africa in 1981 despite an international boycott of the country because of its apartheid policy. He faced pickets in South Africa and fifteen North American cities he toured subsequently including Albany, Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto. The United Nations agency supporting the boycott asked him to apologize and promise not to visit South Africa until the abolition of apartheid to which he responded that they could "kindly kiss (my) far end". Charles described himself as a "Huber Humphrey Democrat" despite this, Charles still accepted 100,000 to perform America the Beautiful at Ronald Reagan's inaugural ball. In response to criticism, his manager, Ray Adams, commented: "for that kind of money we would have sung America the Beautiful at a Ku Klux Klan rally" Despite being blind, Ray was known as a notorious ladies man. In the movie Ray they showed that Charles used to tell how beautiful a woman was by feeling on her wrists.

Charles was married twice and fathered twelve children. In a sixty minutes profile, Ray admitted to Ed Bradley that he "auditioned "his female back-up singers. The saying was, "To be a Rae let (back-up dancer) you " ve got to let Ray". From the time of his switch from straight rhythm and blues with a combo, Charles was often accused of selling out. Charles left behind his classic formulation of Rhythm and blues to sing country music, pop songs, and soft drink commercials. In the process, he went from a small black audience to worldwide fame.

I still don't understand why black people always want to classify other blacks as sell outs once they advance in the world and start doing things that never seemed possible before. In 1986, Ray collaborated with Billy Joel on "Baby Grand" for Joel's album The Bridge. He became famous again in the 1990's a spokesman for Diet Pepsi, but it is said that it boosted his career with younger audience, particularly through popularizing the catch phrase "You " ve got the right one, baby!" He also did guest vocals for the INXS song "Please (You " ve Got That... ) ", on the Full Moon, Dirty Hearts album. Ray also received many awards. He was an original inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was also a member of the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame, the Blues Hall of Fame, the Songwriters' Hall of Fame, the Grammy Hall of Fame, the Jazz of Fame, the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, the Florida Artists Hall of Fame, and the Playboy Hall of Fame.

Last performance sOne of Charles's last public performances was in 2003 at a televised annual electronic media journalist banquet held in Washington, DC. President George W. Bush was in the audience where he performed "Georgia On My Mind" and "America the Beautiful", though the singing was a bit slower and had some more vocal difficulty than in his younger days. Ray Charles's final public appearance came on April 30, 2004, at the dedication of his music studio as an historic landmark in the city of Los Angeles. Ray Charles died at age 73 of liver disease at his home in Beverly Hills, California surrounded by family and friends. He was buried in the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California. Ray's final album, Genius Love Company, released after his death, consist of duets with various admirers and contemporaries, including B.B. King, Van Morrison, Willie Nelson, James Taylor, Elton John, Bonnie Raitt, Diana Krall, Norah Jones, and Johnny Mathis.

These duets were recorded face to face, with both performers in the studio at the same time. Ray, Making The Movie In October of 2004, the movie Ray was released. The thirty six year old actor Jamie Foxx played the role of Ray Charles. Foxx is winning raves for his portrayal of the genius. Even though Ray died shortly after filming of "Ray" was completed he was still able to meet with Foxx so that he could get some inspiration from his character. In preparing for the role, Foxx was invited to meet with Charles.

After talking a while, they sat down together at a piano. Foxx stated, "He came in and he put his stamp on me."We played tandem piano. We played the blues together."I hit one wrong note and he stopped", Foxx recalled. "Why'd you do that?" Foxx asked him.

He replied", don't do that. Don't hit wrong notes". It was at this point when Jamie Foxx realized that Ray Charles had to have sounds in harmony at all times. Foxx discovered this talking to others who knew Charles intimately both his sweet and charming and the backstage Ray, who could be temperamental, especially in a noisy, crowded room. Charles stated, "When you can't see, every single sound is going on in your head and you can't stop it. And it can drive you crazy.

To hit a wrong note around him, that's like taking a bat and hitting him in the knees. So we took that DNA from Ray and put it into every aspect of his life in the movie". I thought that this movie was excellent. Not only was it excellent but Jamie's performance was Oscar worthy in my opinion. After watching this film I felt that Jamie Foxx didn't just play Ray Charles in a movie, he actually became Ray Charles. Chuck Berry spent 16 years trying to get the film made.

Charles himself was happy to indulge the filmmakers and his son Ray Jr. also served as a producer. Much of his family attended the recent Hollywood premiere. Conclusion Ray Charles is nothing short of the musical genius that people describe him as. It seems that the moral to the story of Ray's life is that a man can only be free when he's not a slave to a subordinate. It also seems to want to celebrate the idea that it is only out of conflict, pain, and captivity that passionate music can be birthed. This theme is also apparent in all of the discussion that we had in class referring to the birth of African slave songs, the blues, jazz, and even spirituals.

It seems that black people had to go through a struggle in order to produce great music. Black people also had to overcome their situations and I think Ray has proven to be a prime example. Despite of his handicap he did not let this bring him too far down. Ray Charles, eventually overcame sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll to live a long and prosperous life in the limelight, there are hundreds, if not thousands of anonymous artists who die of an overdose (even in this story, one of Ray's lovers ODs), waste away with a sexually transmitted disease, or simply wash out, unremembered and unfulfilled.

Ray Charles may have passed away but his life and legacy along with his numerous musical hits will forever remain in our hearts.

Bibliography

Breznican, Anthony. Internet Source. November 5, 2004. web Charles forever. com (I was not sure how to site this Because there was no author or title to the page however, The address is given) web.