RayA Movie Review

By Sally Morem

“No Ray Charles?!?”

Remember that great old Flip Wilson bit about Columbus, Queen Isabella and Ray Charles?

Columbus visits Queen Isabella to tell her of his crazy America project:

“If I don’t discover America there’s not gonna be a Benjamin Franklin, or a Star-Spangled Banner, no land of the free, and the home of the brave, and no Ray Charles.”

On hearing there’d be no Ray Charles, the queen panics. ”No Ray Charles….Ray Charles? You gonna find Ray Charles? He in America?”

Isabella runs through the castle screaming for Ferdinand. ”Chris gon’ fine Ray Charles. He goin’ to America on that boat. What you say?”

Nothing would be more horrifying than an America without Ray Charles. Fortunately for us, America did have and enjoy Ray Charles for over 50 years of pure musical pleasure.

With the movie Ray we get to experience the story of this great entertainer and so much of the early music that made him the superstar he was. Most of us were too young to know Ray’s early work from the Fifties and Sixties. This movie reintroduces such smash hits as “What Kind of Man Are You?” “What’d I Say,” “Rockhouse,” “I Got a Woman,” and, “Georgia on My Mind,” and shows us how they were made.

With a musical biography such as this, the sound quality needs to be good. Ray’s is superb. The soundtrack on my DVD played beautifully on my home entertainment center. Each scene is lush with layers of details that bespeaks of an enormous amount of research. The re-creations of a sharecropper’s village, a Seattle dive, restaurants, recording studios, concert halls, the homes, and the streets of post-war America were spot-on. The costumes, the cars, the gadgetry, the furnishings reminded me of my early childhood in the Fifties and my later childhood in the Sixties.

Director Taylor Hackford had obtained the rights to a movie about Ray Charles 15 years before being able to produce Ray. When work began, Ray participated fully in its development, providing the screenwriters with a number of very personal memories, many of them very painful.

Hackford was probably annoyed at how long it took to get the project off the ground. But, he admitted in an interview, that he was very thankful he had to wait until Jamie Foxx came along. Jamie was the perfect actor for the role. Not only did he look like a young Ray Charles, he was a trained jazz pianist. He wouldn’t need a double when playing Ray’s tunes. He was capable of capturing the essence of Ray through his own acting and musical talents.

Jamie Foxx proved himself to Ray Charles by jamming with him on dual keyboards in a recording studio. While Jamie played a few jazzy notes, Ray improvised on the spot. Ray then taught Jamie how to play while wearing a blindfold, a nerve-wracking experience for any sighted pianist. He gutted it out and mastered the basic technique of playing by touch. Hackford said it was clear right then that Jamie had passed Ray’s audition. Ray had personally selected Jamie to play himself in a movie about himself.

Jamie is a smart actor. When invited to keep jamming with Ray to learn more about him over subsequent days, Jamie refused. He realized he had to capture the young Ray, not the old Ray. So, he listened over and over to the old songs to capture young Ray’s singing and playing style, and watched old TV interviews to get the young Ray’s speech mannerisms and movement. With one crucial exception, every one of Ray’s performances in the movie were played and song by Jamie Foxx. No stand-in, no double, no lip-syncing with Ray Charles records allowed.

Makeup artists worked on Jamie’s eyes to make them look like the real wreck of Ray’s eyes. When he takes off his sunglasses, he is able to show Ray’s vulnerability. Make up artists and hair stylists helped him capture Ray’s changing looks over a 15-year period.

Jamie’s achievement is enormous. He had to master the manifold aspects of Ray’s inner and outer life: As a grown man devastated by memories of being a youngster who had been raised in poverty, who watched his younger brother drown when he was five years old, and became blind when only seven. As a man who then developed into a tremendously capable technical musician. As a wonderfully emotive jazz singer who started as a novice in the music business, became an emerging talent, and then achieved American superstar status. As a tough-as-nails bandleader and businessman. As a hard-core heroin junkie. As a married man who openly cheated on his wife. As a doting father. As a man twisted by the most horrifying nightmares. And as a man buoyed by immense love and acclaim by millions of fans.

It is said that the human mind contains a universe of experiences and viewpoints. This was certainly true of Ray Charles, and through the magic of the silver screen, Jamie Foxx was able to make manifest that universe. He well deserved his Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Ray.

Young Ray Charles Robinson began life in Florida. We are shown flashbacks, interspersed with the scenes of Ray as a grown man, of how he began embracing music as a little boy fascinated by his neighbor’s piano playing. The old gentleman had him play a few simple notes while he played boogie-woogie.

Notwithstanding his family’s poverty, young Ray enjoyed a very well-rounded musical education. He listened to the Grand Ole Opry radio show every Saturday night. “I would never miss that for nothing,” he said in an interview. He also listened to blues, boogie-woogie, swing band music, “the white music along with the black.” At school, he was exposed to classical music. And at church, he was immersed in gospel music.

We see him play with his little brother unselfconsciously on the dusty street in front of him mother’s cabin. We see the horrifying scene in which the little brother dies drowning in a laundry tub left outside. We watch as his mother breaks down at the funeral service. We also watch as the death eats away at young Ray by destroying his eyesight—a psychosomatic responses to the horror—and the recurring nightmares he suffered for decades thereafter. And then we see Ray as a man, decide quite consciously and deliberately to take heroin in an effort to destroy those nightmares.

After attending a school for blind children for several years, Ray leaves school at age 15. His mother had died the year before. His seldom seen father would die the next year. His brother died in that tub. Blind, he had to make his own way through life in every sense of those words.

He begins life in the music industry by creating small combos and performing in dives. At one point (shown in the movie as a flashback) he takes a job as pianist with a white country-western band, the Florida Playboys, overcoming prejudice by wowing them with his ability.

The story as presented in the movie actually begins with a bus trip to Seattle in 1948. After arriving at the night club where he was booked, 18-year-old Ray Charles meets an even younger Quincy Jones on the street. Jones is underage, and so is unceremoniously ejected by the bouncer when he tries to go in with Ray.

When the movie was being made, the real, much older, Quincy Jones helped Jamie Foxx “get” the young Ray. He absolutely adored Jamie’s performance.

Ray deeply admired Nat “King” Cole, and would play “Route 66” and “Straighten Up and Fly Right” for customers happily dancing on the night club’s tiny, crowded floor.

Jack Lauderdale, owner of black indie recording company, Downbeat (later, Swingtime), notices Ray’s talent and signs him. At this point, Ray Charles Robinson finds out he has to drop his last name. Why? Because “Ray Robinson” was already being used by the famous heavyweight boxer, Sugar Ray Robinson. Ray produces his first small time hit with them, “Confession Blues.” A bigger hit is “Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand.”

When he went on tour with his band for Swingtime, we see Ray take that treacherous step in the bathroom of a little chitlin’ joint in the South. He wasn’t tricked into taking the heroin. He demanded it from his fellow musicians.

Lauderdale was overextended in 1951 and let the music community know that Ray’s contract was for sale. The executives at Atlantic Records immediately snapped that contract up, with astonishing results. Swingtime committed perhaps the most fortuitous firing for an artist in the history of the American music industry. With Atlantic, Ray had access to much better recording technology and the marketing muscle of a major label. Atlantic’s new acquisition would become one of America’s genuine musical superstars under their tutelage. A measly little $2,500 contract investment grew into millions of dollars for them.

We watch Ray’s rise to stardom. It begins inauspiciously as Ray finds it easier to use his mimicking ability to “sing Nat Cole” or “sing Charles Brown.” Those records sell well but not well enough. We see the recording sessions from the earliest days at a primitive studio at Swingtime, to the professional facilities at Atlantic, to Ray’s state-of-the-art facilities at RPM in the Sixties. We see Ray innovate. We see him grow as an artist.

We watch as he turns his boss’s song, “Mess Around,” into a hit. The boss’s bad singing (to teach Ray the song) at the studio inspires giggles, but then Ray takes over with the second verse and his virtuoso vocals turns a silly song into an astonishing wild and wooly blues number, which really rocks out, as they say today.

Months later, the Atlantic executives are worrying about an upcoming tour because some musicians can’t make it. What would they do? As they enter the rehearsal studio, Ray starts up the band and hits them with “I Got a

Woman.” Their response? “We gotta record this.” This was Ray’s first song with a very strong gospel edge to it. Music historians say this song announced the birth of soul music to the world. Ray would make that tour.

On an earlier road trip, the band listened to a radio show featuring a great gospel song. Ray figured he could put that sound to good use. And he did. By combining gospel with the blues in “I Got a Woman,” Ray was taking a genuine risk.

“…I got criticism from the churches, and from musicians too. They thought it was sacrilegious or something, and what was I doing, I must be crazy. But I kept doing it, and eventually, instead of criticizing me for it, the people started saying I was an innovator.”

This controversy is well depicted in a nightclub scene in which an outraged man and woman come in and loudly denounce Ray and the band for their “devil music.” One of the band members agrees and leaves with them. Ray calls their bluff by asking the crowd to say amen if they wanted to hear more music. Amens resound and they play on.

By taking those kinds of musical chances, Ray Charles took his first step from being a talented musician to a true original, a grand master of jazz and blues.

By 1955, the color line in the music business was beginning to break down. And the white kids were leading the revolution. They were the ones who were going to the record store, seeking out “black” records. Black artists like Ray Charles were beginning to be heard on white radio stations. “Race records” would soon be a thing of the past.

This is when the Fifties became the Fifties we all remember fondly from such shows as “Happy Days.” These were the days when black artists were creating smash hits and inventing rock and roll (This music genre, originally called R&B, was renamed by disk jockey Alan Freed) along with their white counterparts, such as Elvis and Bill Hailey.

Can anyone think of the Fifties without hearing the music of Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Chuck Berry in their heads? Ray Charles soon joined their ranks. But he refused to compromise his own standards by picking up on the simplified beat of rock and roll. He stuck to bluesy gospel. Atlantic

let him, even though rock groups were beginning to produce enormous hits. Instead, Ray hitched his star to another staple of Fifties music: the girl group.

“I’d always liked the sound of girls’ gospel groups. I could have had four men and formed a regular all male gospel quartet…but instead I wanted the flavor of a man’s voice—my voice—set against women. I hadn’t heard anyone do that in popular music before.”

And so the Raelettes were born. We watch it happen as they rehearse and record. It’s simply astonishing at how well the four women chosen for those roles duplicated the original Raelettes’ sound. The real-life women had an enormous impact on Ray’s songs, especially in “What Kind of Man Are You?” and “Hit the Road Jack.”

“What’d I Say” was Ray’s first million-record seller. His first genuine smash hit. The creation of that song is perhaps the most stunning scene in the movie, even more so than the gritty scenes in which Ray takes heroin.

The band was booked at a posh night club. Ray, when ready to leave, is reminded they had 20 more minutes to fill. They had completely run out of material to play. “What are we gonna do?” asks a band member. Ray tells the band and the Raelettes to follow his lead. “Whatever I say, you answer back.” On the spot, he creates one of the greatest party songs ever recorded, “What’d I Say.”

He improvises from scratch right on the stage. One short verse after another off the top of his head. People started dancing madly and screaming as the band catches on and starts to cook. Ray and the Raelettes engage in “call and response,” a style pulled from the black church. “Uh.” “Uh.” “Oh.” “Oh.” “Huh? “Huh?” “Oh baby, it’s all right. Yeah, it’s all right!” And so on. The whole crew of actors and musicians re-enacted a truly magical musical moment superbly.

One fan at the night club asks where he could buy the record. One of Ray’s men answers, “It doesn’t exist yet. I’ll tell Ray he should record it.” The song was so long—almost six and a half minutes—Atlantic had to split it in two by putting it on both sides of the ‘45.’ So, we wind up with “What’d I Say,” Parts 1 & 2. And the rest is music history.

Margie Hendrix was Ray’s lover and lead female singer. She sings a smokin’ bluesy, “What Kind of Man Are You?” Another hit. Years later, one of their lovers’ quarrels leads Ray straight to the creation of that jaunty smash hit “Hit the Road Jack.”

“Rockhouse,” a wonderful boogie-woogie instrumental, was used as the introductory song for Ray’s concerts. Another pianist would play it as Ray was led out on stage. I remember the song from the Eighties when that famous jazz quartet, Manhattan Transfer, covered it with a glorious vocalese rendition (an instrumental with added lyrics) called “Ray’s Rockhouse.”

Whoever came up with the lyrics to this one had a fun sense of humor, which I’m sure Ray enjoyed when he heard it: “Sisters of the blockhouse ain’t got no business comin’ to the Rockhouse. All the people in here are all into sin in here…”

We watch as Ray and his associates negotiate in hardball style with ABC Records. He is offered a contract Atlantic can’t possibly match, including full artistic control, his own recording studio, and ownership of his own master recordings. No other superstar ever got that last perk, not even Sinatra or Crosby.

We watch as Ray uses his creative control to stretch his creative wings. He writes a full, lush orchestration for “Georgia on My Mind,” the recording session of which is lovingly recreated in the movie, complete with an orchestra and a full choir with Ray at the piano. Members of the band are peeved because they aren’t included.

When he insists on playing country music, ABC executives are not pleased. His fans are outraged. But Ray won’t be denied. What they didn’t know is that he grew up a genuine country-western music fan and is determined to put his mark on the genre.

This led to a well-staged, humorously tense scenes. Ray and his band are beginning to perform in a large auditorium. His fans know exactly what he’s up to. They start cat-calling for his blues songs. None of that hillbilly music for them. The theater manager, a wily man who becomes Ray’s recording manager right after the concert in reward for his prompt action, tells the stage crew to kill all the lights in the house, except those spotlighting Ray. That quiets the crowd down for his rendition of “I Can’t

Stop Loving You.” Once the crowd shuts up, they really hear his wonderful rendition of the song and love it. He receives a standing ovation.

After being threatened with prosecution for possession of heroin and being told by his wife that “they’ll take your music away,” Ray volunteers to go to a rehab clinic. We see him going through the dreadful business of withdrawal, and then we see him experience one more dream, this time not a nightmare, but a dream of redemption. This scene did make me teary-eyed.

Did he really receive a vision from his dead mother and little brother at rehab? Did his promise to his dead mother to “never be a cripple again” happen? Did that vision cure him of his addiction? I have no idea. The movie tells us he never took heroin again after that day. All I know is that that scene of redemption ties everything together so magnificently near the end of the movie, that if the dream never happened, it should have.

I said earlier that Jamie Foxx played and sang in every scene but one. We see earlier in the movie how Ray refuses to play in a segregated venue in Georgia in the early Sixties. In response, the Legislature forbad him from ever performing in Georgia again. In 1979, the Legislature rescinded that cruel ban, apologized to him in person, and voted to make “Georgia on My Mind” the official state song of Georgia.

This is when we hear what is perhaps Ray Charles’ most famous recording, his own “Georgia on My Mind.” We end with a lovely personal tribute to him with images from the movie.

There is no holding back in this movie, not from the anger of the junkie, or the desire of the womanizer, nor the anguish of loss. But what struck me most forcibly was the joy of the music.

* * *

Ray Charles was one of the most famous entertainers in history. He performed around the world for kings and prime ministers. He performed 200-300 nights each year before his final illness and did so for over 50 years.

Robert Palmer revealed something of the enormous amount of work that went into creating all that music over the decades. Ray told him he was always practicing, actually singing in the shower. “I’m always singing

something, trying to discover little things, and, although people make a lot of jokes about it, one of the best places to actually practice is in the shower. If the shower’s an average-size shower where the sound can wallow around in those tile walls, you can really hear yourself. If you should get out of tune, you hear it right away.”

I wrote rhythms that moved me. My style requires pure heart singing.—Ray Charles Robinson: 1930-2004.

A Partial Ray Charles Discography:

Some of the songs in the movie, Ray, included:

Hit the Road JackWhat’d I SayWhat Kind of Man Are YouGeorgia on My MindI Can’t Stop Loving YouI Got a WomanNight and DayRockhouseUnchain My HeartAnytimeStraighten Up and Fly RightRoute 66The Midnight HourMess AroundRoll With My BabyThe Key of GI Believe to My SoulBye, Bye Love

Sources:

Ray, (Universal Pictures, 2005). Director, Producer, Story—Taylor Hackford.

Quotes from Ray Charles, and further information on Ray, his life and music, were drawn from The Birth of Soul, written by Robert Palmer and published in a companion booklet to a boxed set of Ray Charles’ music (Remastered and compiled in three CDs, recorded from 1952 to 1959 under the Atlantic label and republished by Atlantic Records in 1991).

“Ray’s Rockhouse” was performed on the album Vocalese by Manhattan Transfer. (Atlantic Records, 1985)