Ray Charles - Softcover

Lydon, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415970431 ISBN 13: 9780415970433

Publisher: Routledge, 2004

Synopsis

Ray Charles: Man and Music is a complete biography of this seminal singer/pianist who has been active on the American music scene since the mid-'50s. Originally published in 1995 by Penguin Books, and universally hailed as the definitive biography, this new edition will bring Charles's life up to date, covering the last 7 years of his life.

About this title

Review:

In 1954, Atlantic Records honchos Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler visited an Atlanta club where one of their artists was gigging. Ray Charles and his band blew into a new song when the men entered. It was "I Got a Woman," the tune that marked the blind Albany, Georgia-born singer-pianist's evolution from an able imitator of Nat "King" Cole and Charles Brown into an artist who would transform American music. In Ray Charles: Man and Music, veteran music journalist Michael Lydon imbues the familiar story with fresh detail upon fresh detail. Charles's early years spent scuffling on the chitlin circuit, his embrace of everything from pop chestnuts and country hits to hip jazz as an audaciously eclectic record maker, and the many hours given over to womanizing and a heroin addiction at the height of his stardom are given a cinematic immediacy here. More than most artists, Charles followed his instincts to huge artistic rewards and the love of many listeners who recognized their own voices in his sound. Lydon captures as much of the offstage man as is likely to ever make it to the page--the man who himself once insisted, "My life was what it was. Whatever it became, I made it so." --Rickey Wright

About the Author:

Michael Lydon was a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine and one fo the most highly regarded rock journalists of his generation. He is the author of Flashbacks: Eyewitness Accounts of the Rock Revolution (Routledge, 2003). He resides in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0415970431
• ISBN 13: 9780415970433
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 488