Paying Tibute to Ray Charles-A National Treasure

PAYING TRIBUTE TO "RAY CHARLES-A NATIONAL TREASURE" -- (Extensions of Remarks - June 14, 2004)

SPEECH OF
HON. DANNY K. DAVIS
OF ILLINOIS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

MONDAY, JUNE 14, 2004

Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, tonight I pay tribute to the angel of soul in music Mr. Ray Charles the piano man with the soulful voice who reshaped American music for a half century. He brought the essence of soul to country, jazz, rock, and every other style of music that you can think of he had an influence on it.

Mr. Charles died at the age of 73 of an acute liver disease at his Beverly Hills home at 11:35 a.m. on Thursday, June 10, 2004 surrounded by family and friends. As a singer, pianist and composer, Charles broke racial and musical barriers as an African American, blind by the age of 7 and an orphan at 15, he spent the rest of his life blending rhythm and blues into various musical art forms that earned him 12 Grammy Awards and immense fame for five decades.

Ray Charles "The Genius" produced many hit songs like "What'd I Say?" which featured the Raelettes, was his first million selling song. Next came a classic version of Hoagy Carmichael's 1930 song "Georgia on My Mind." Charles version became the official state song of Georgia. Due to some objections by recording executives at the label company, Charles made "Modern Sounds in Country and Western music" in 1962, an album that produced a million-seller with songs like "I Can't Stop Loving You" and the popular hit "Hit the Road, Jack" and "Let the Good Times Roll." At the 1960 Grammy Awards, he took home four awards across all genres, including best vocal performance by a pop artist ("Georgia on My Mind"), best vocal performance album ("The Genius of Ray Charles") and best R&B performance ("Let the Good Times Roll").

He later won Grammy Awards for "Busted" in 1963 and "Crying Time" in 1966 and other songs like "Let's Go Get Stoned." In all, Mr. Charles made more than 60 albums and his influence has resonated through generations of country, pop, R&B and gospel singers.

Mr. Charles began involving himself in music at a very early age. In his autobiography, Charles said, "as long as I can remember, music has always been something extraordinary in my life. It's always been something that completely captured my attention-from the time I was three, when Mr. Pitman was showing me these little melodies. My first love was the music I heard in the community: blues, church gospel music, and country and western. My mom would let me stay up to listen to the Grand Old Opry on Saturday night. That's the only time I got to stay up late. I heard the blues played by Muddy Waters and Blind Boy Philips and Tampa Red and Big Boy Crudup. And of course every night if you listened to the right station, you might pick up a little Duke Ellington or Count Basie. But the bulk of what I heard of blues in those days was called "race music," which became rhythm and blues, and rhythm and blues later was called soul music."

Mr. Charles learned to read and write music in Braille, scored for big bands and played instruments like the trumpet, clarinet, organ, alto sax and the piano. This experience in reading Braille and playing by ear helped Charles develop a superb memory where he could sit at his desk and write a complete arrangement in his head and not touch a musical instrument and the music would come out exactly the way it sounded in his head.

Mr. Charles thank you for being the angel of soul, you will be missed.

END