Ray Charles: Man and Music - Hardcover

Michael Lydon

3.53

66 ratings by Goodreads

9780756758257: Ray Charles: Man and Music

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0756758254 ISBN 13: 9780756758257

Publisher: Riverhead Books, 1998

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This is the first full-length biography of Ray Charles. He waged an incredible fight to fulfill his ambition to become a great musician. When 5, his brother drowned; at age 6 he went blind; & when he was 14 his mother died. But this driven youth talked his way into gig s at Jacksonville s toughest juke joints, learning from older musicians & writing dazzling arrangements. He struggled with heroin abuse & loved countless women. Vet. of the jazz scene -- Quincy Jones, David Newman, & Leroy Cooper -- became lifelong friends & collaborators. Charles negotiated an unheard-of arrangement with his record label, which gave him complete ownership of his master tapes & made him a millionaire. Photos.

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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.

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