Not Fade Away: A Backstage Pass to 20 Years of Rock & Roll

by Ben Fong-Torres

  But, say, Joe Cocker is a white man, and British; you were emulating a fellow black.

  I'm not the kind of a guy that wants to generalize and say that you can't do this if you're black or you can't do that if you're white. I think that if a man has had the kicking around and the abuse and the scorn, I think that if he has talent, he can put that some way or another so that the people can hear him. I remember one time a guy asked me, hey, man, do you think a white cat could ever sing the blues? I feel that anybody, if you ever have the blues bad enough, I don't give a damn if he's green, purple-he can give it to ya.

  I don't have time to be bitter. What I have time for is to try to see what I can do to help the guy that's comin' up and maybe he can make it better if I can help him. You see? I done seen all this, man. I know all about the places where I couldn't drink outta the fountain. I know all about the places I couldn't go to the bathroom when I had to pee-somethin' that's natural for every human man bein'. You understand me? See, I know about that, but I don't want to let that get into what I'm doin'. I figure that, okay, I'm in this business because I love music. So I can't let bitterness get into me, but if you ask me what's really happenin', if you get people and sit them down and say, hey, man, let's cut all the fat outta this.

  ...Here I am, and here's a guy who'll spend millions of dollars to find a white cat just to imitate me, and he'll do far better than me. Well, the only thing that I can say that sort of helps me a little bit, what keeps me goin'-I say two things. First of all, in order for that guy to copy me, he gotta wait till I do it first. Now [laughter], the second thing I feel, well, if this is the case, if you take this guy over me and he's just an imitation of me, then that says to me that I must be pretty damn good. Because I don't know nobody that you wanna copy that ain't worth a damn. All right, hello [laughter].

  That says it?

  That says it all, man. I mean, that's your salvation, 'cause if you don't think like that, you'll be bitter. You really would be bitter.

  Other critics have said that when Aretha moved from Columbia to Atlantic, she enjoyed immense success, while you moved to ABC and in the mid-sixties, you were on kind of a downhill critical slide with records.

  Yeah?

  Now, how did you feel about that?

  Oh, I don't know. I guess that's probably some cat who didn't see my financial sheet. I don't really worry about that, you know. Fortunately for me, throughout my career-now it's true, I haven't had a million-seller every time I put out a record, but what has happened with me has been a very simple thing. I've had those 400,000, 700,000, 300,000, 800.000, and that's been constantly goin' on all through my career. I'll tell you what my answer is: When I can walk into an airport and you get little kids sayin' [whispering], "Mama that's Ray Charles," I'm raisin' them. That's where I'm at, man.

  Now, you say this is in the mid-sixties, right? I just wanna ask you a dumb question. Tell me, what was wrong with "Crying Time"? That was in the mid-sixties. "Let's Go Get Stoned." I didn't find nothin' wrong with these songs. I mean they seemed to sell all right.

  We were talking about when you started out. You played what was called "cocktail music," playing piano and singing songs like "If I Give You My Love." But were you always looking to form your own big band?

  My goal was, "Wow, if I could only just get to make records, too." That's why, in 1948, when they had the union ban on musicians so they weren't allowed to record, I recorded anyway-first of all, I didn't know about the ban. I was only about 17 or somethin' like that. I was workin' in Seattle, then, and a fellow came up from Los Angeles, Jack Lauderdale, and he had a little record company [Swing Time], and I was workin' at the Rockin' Chair. He came and one night he heard me playing and he said to me, "Listen, I have a record company. I would like to record you." Man, I was so glad, I didn't ask him how much money I was gonna get. So he said, "Look, I'm gonna take you down to Los Angeles." And wow, Los Angeles, you know. Ooh, yeah, yeah. And I'm gonna be recorded, man.

  I went down there and we made a song called "Confession Blues." That was my first record. Sold pretty good. Then, about a year later, 1949, we made a song called "Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand." Now that really was a big hit. "Confession Blues" sold well enough to suit me, because I was hearing it where I went. But when I was out on the road workin' with Lowell Fulsom, he had a big record called "Every Day I Have the Blues." We were on the same label. I had "Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand," and he was singin' "Every Day I Have the Blues," and we were packin' `em in. This is really where I started touring the country.

  When you left Florida, why did you choose to go to the other corner of the country?

  It was just-New York I was frightful of, 'cause I just couldn't imagine myself goin' to New York or Chicago or even Los Angeles. They sounded so big, man. I guess I always felt that I was pretty good, but I wasn't sure of myself to want to jump out into a big city like New York. So what I wanted to do was pick a town that was far away from Florida, not huge, and Seattle really was about as far away as I could get.

  How long did you stay with Swing Time?

  I was there until Atlantic bought the contract. I think it was '51 or so. About three or four years. That was Ahmet [Ertegun] and Herb Abramson, I think, at that time. I don't know how that was done. I met with the people at Atlantic, and they said, "Well, we'd like to record you," so I said, "Well, I'm under contract to somebody." They said, "Well, look, we'll buy the contract." So I said, "Fine, buy it." And that's it. Finished.

  After Swing Time, when you began searching around for your own voice, did you find it naturally or did you get help from Ahmet or Jerry?

  I gotta tell you the truth, man, about Ahmet and Nesuhi [Ertegun] and Herb Abramson and Jerry when he came in, these people never at any time told me what to sing or how to sing it. Okay? I have to be honest with you. I think if they had told me that, I woulda told them where to take the contract. I figured that whatever I'm doin', I'm gonna do it to the best of my ability. Now, you have a right to say you don't want it, but you can't tell me how to do it. I won't allow that. I guess I've always been very firm about that.

  All I did, and Jerry can tell you-he never put any pressure on me. I would call him up and say, "Hey, Jerry, I'm ready to record." That's how we did "I've Got a Woman." I was on the road, workin' every day. I called him up in New York and said, hey, I'm ready to record. So he said, where are you, where are you gonna be? I said I'd be in Atlanta in a few days. He flew down to Atlanta, Georgia. That's where we made "I've Got a Woman." Little studio. just a little bit-I think it was WGST or somethin'. Little bitty, and they weren't equipped for recording. But we went in there and we struggled and we managed it. That's the way we did it.

  Why did you leave Atlantic? Jerry Wexler told me it was a "shock" to him.

  It was the kind of thing where ABC came up with a contract. I think they were trying to lure somebody there, and I hate to say this, because it makes me sound like I'm blowin' my own horn, but you know, I was with Atlantic and we had this big hit "What'd I Say" and a couple other things, so they came up with a contract and I let Jerry and them know about it. The contract was so unreal.. .They knew the whole bit, and my thing was, look, I'm not asking you to better ABC's deal, I'm just saying if you can match it, I'll stay with you. And it was the kind of thing where they said, "Look, Ray, it's awfully heavy for us."

  You gotta understand the position of each party, and, of course, ABC at the time was offering me the kind of a contract that, believe me, in those days, in 1959, was unheard of. So what they were basically after was the name and to stimulate other names.

  To sign with ABC.

  Right. And so I was like a pawn, but as it was we were so lucky, because right after I went with ABC, we came up with "Georgia," the country-western stuff, see? But I did a country-western song with Atlantic before I went to ABC, but the other side of it sold, the "I Believe to My Soul." Well, on the back of that was a song called "I'm Movin' On."

  Hank Snow.

  That's righ
t. There's where I first get the idea. But it just turned out that once I changed contracts, I followed that idea. Not to be-don't misunderstand me-I didn't want to be a Charlie Pride, now. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I'm just saying that was not my intent. I just wanted to take country-western songs. When I sing "I Can't Stop Loving You," I'm not singin' it country-western. I'm singin' it like me. But I think the words to country songs are very earthy like the blues, see, very down. They're not as dressed up, and the people are very honest and say, "Look, I miss you, darlin', so I went out and I got drunk in this bar." That's the way you say it. Wherein Tin Pan Alley will say, "Oh, I missed you, darling, so I went to this restaurant and I sat down and I had dinner for one." That's cleaned up now, you see? But country songs and the blues is like it is.

  I did two albums of country-western, you gotta remember, I did Volume 1, and hell, if you get an album to sell well over a million, that's almost forcing you to do one more. But that's all I did with country-western was two albums.

  Do you listen to a lot of today's artists? Marvin Gaye, Sly Stone...

  Oh, yeah, well, I like these people's music. I like Marvin Gaye. I like some of the things that Sly's done. I like, you know I'm a great fan of Aretha Franklin. I like Stevie Wonder. I like Sinatra. I like Ella Fitzgerald. I like many people, just like I like many varieties of music. On the other hand, say, like here's a guy like-many times, I may go and get out my old Art Tatum records, 'cause I still think that he's the greatest piano player ever lived, bar none. I'm speakin' about playin' jazz music, as we call it. I've never heard nobody before or since this man that could do to a piano what he could do.

  Have you heard much about the new black movies?

  No, not really. I haven't really delved into it.

  Some people have charged that movies like Super Fly romanticize those things in the black culture that are romanticized by, say, Godfather or by cowboy movies.

  I would have to say that I think if I was gonna make a movie of that kind, I would do it in a different way and still say the same thing. I don't think it's so much of what you're saying, it's the way it was being said to make it seem like it's quite glamorous, and I don't think I would have went that far. You see, you should also show in that movie, yeah, you can go out and be a coke dealer, but you gotta remember you're gonna wind up killin' a few of your brothers, too, dealin' in that kinda stuff, and you're gonna wind up sendin' quite a few people to jail, and you're gonna wind up breakin' a lotta people's hearts, too, when you're doin' that. 'Cause believe me, man, there's noth- in' worse than seein' a 12-year-old kid hooked. I mean, you know when you got coke, you got some heroin around. C'mon now.

  Did your own involvement in drugs almost knock you out in music?

  No. No. No. Nope. I can't say that.

  Heights in music were reached during that stage?

  Exactly. So I mean, obviously, I couldn't say that, could I? You know, like I say, I ain't never gonna lie to you. It didn't knock me out or wasn't about to knock me out. My thing was that when my kids started growin' up-I remember one day my oldest son, he was one of the baseball players, they were havin' a little reception and they were giving out these little trophies, and I was supposed to go, and what happened, I had a recordin' session that night. I was doing the soundtrack for The Cincinnati Kid, and I did the singin' on that, as you remember, but what I did, I went by there with him to this banquet, and I had to leave before the thing was over, and he cried. And that hurt me. I started thinkin', here's a child. It means so much to him for his father to be at this banquet. And I started thinkin' that suppose that somethin' happened, I get put in jail and somebody comes along and says, "Oh, your daddy's a jailbird." I figure the next thing he'll do is haul up and knock hell out of `em, and now he's gonna be in trouble all over me, when you break it down. That was my decision then. I said, look, I mean, that ain't it for me.

  When was this?

  This was like in '64 or '6 5 or somethin', give or take.

  That all came to a head right around '65 ?

  That's right. Right then. I just felt that it was a bad scene. I got involved in it-my situation is, I was young. I was about maybe 17, 18 years old or somethin' like that, and it always, you know, like, it was a thing where I wanted to be among the big fellas, like cats in the band, and these guys would always go and leave the kid "till we come back," you know. And I wanted to be a part, so I begged and pleaded until somebody said, "Okay, man, goddamn it, come on, all right." And they took me, and there I was, so they were doin' it and I wanted to belong, you know. I mean, this is really how it started, and once it started, there it was, you know. But I never got so involved in it to the point where I was out of my mind or didn't know what the hell I was doin', you know. Like, I heard of people havin' habits of sixty dollars a day or one hundred dollars a day. I never had nothin' like that.

  How much did you take per day?

  Oh, I probably spent about twenty dollars. Never got above that.

  What did you learn through the Viennese psychoanalyst?

  Who?

  The psychoanalyst that you were supposed to have seen for a couple of years?

  What did we talk about? Nothin'. Like, and he's not a psychoanalyst. I mean, what he was, was a psychiatrist. He had no influence, say, as far as my doing or not doing anything. As a matter of fact, we didn't even get into-I told him one thing. I went there and said, "First of all we're gonna get one thing straight. You don't have to convince me not to do anything. I've already made up my mind, I ain't gonna do it, and it's finished. Fine. That's it." And so, when we saw each other we just talked in general about just whatever popped up...

  Was that year off hard for you?

  I'm basically a lazy person. It's never hard for me to relax. But I do enjoy doin' things. The work I'm doin' is not work to me. It's fun. See, it's like a hobby that I'm gettin' paid for and truly is part of my relaxation.

  Then why did you take a year off?

  Well, I felt that I should do it just because I wanted to. Now, it was necessary, of course. I hired a psychiatrist so that when we went into court, I thought it might be beneficial. You tell a judge somethin' like a cat been usin' somethin' for fifteen years, and all of a sudden the man say he ain't gonna do it no more, and the cat gonna say, "Come on now, let's get down to the facts." But if a psychiatrist says it, for some reason, at least the judge will kinda lean towards believin' the cat. Because, let's face it, man, if a guy doesn't want to stop doin' somethin', the judge, the psychiatrist, the jailer, ain't nobody gonna-the people stay in jail five years and come out on the street one day right back at it.

  You can make yourself stop if you see somethin' happenin' to your children or somethin' happenin' to your life or whatever. You just tell yourself, look, okay, that's a bad scene. I'm gonna quit, just stop, you know. And once your mind is made up, that's it. That's all it is, man. I know I'm oversimplifying it, but I swear to you, this is the truth.

  I'll tell you somethin', now, I had the psychiatrist, and the man had a legal right to what you call trim me down a little less each day until I got down to nothin'. I didn't do that. Okay? Now, that's somethin'. The doctor didn't believe this himself, that I have never in all my years, I've never seen nothin' like this in my life. They even tested me, man. They thought somebody must be slippin' me somethin'. Then, so they cut my visitation off, just to make sure, and I still was the same way, so they said, no, it can't be that. And then, another thing surprised him. Not only was I not doing anything, but they try to say do you want anything to help you sleep? You want any sleepin' pills? I said, well, I ain't been takin' sleepin' pills. I don't figure I need to take `em now. So and that was kind of a shocker. Because the hospital didn't believe it, the doctor didn't believe it. And man, they sent me in-they tested me two or three times, the usual testin' that they do on you. Like, they called me up one day and I'm workin' like hell, you know? Doin' my concerts, and they called me up and said, "Hey, we want you to go to McLean's H
ospital [in Boston] and check in tomorrow." Now that meant one thing. If I was doin' it, they ain't no way in the world I could get it outta my system in a day. Not only did they send me there, but they waited until the weather got kinda cool. Now, they know if you usin' any kinda drugs, you can't stand that cold. You just can't take it. So, man, they cut off the heat on me. Made me mad as hell. I went up and told the nurse I'm gonna sue the goddamn hospital if I catch cold. I know what y'all been doin'. I want some heat put back in my room. I mean, I'm not stupid. But, I'm literally freezin'. So you put the heat back in there. I'll be damned if I-once I leave here, I got to go back to work, and I refuse to have pneumonia behind some bull. I guess the woman must have said they can't be nothin' wrong with this man, after all the testin' we done and everything else, and all he can do is get mad, you know. So after a while they got to believe me, but it took an awful lot of doin'.

  This came after your stay at St. Francis Hospital in Lynwood, California?

  Yeah, well, this was somethin' ordered by the court. This was part of my thing. They didn't tell me I couldn't work or nothin', they just said, look, any day we might call you, you know, and say this to you. What they did, they watched my schedule and knew I was workin', so they knew of a day when I wasn't workin'. They knew my schedule better than me, and all of a sudden they just, bam-you just got to go, man. So they did test me a couple of times just to make sure.

  I didn't have a wind-down program. I just stopped, period. You hear about people who bite the sheets and eat up the pillow, and I didn't do none of that. So that worried people. They took all my clothes. They searched them. And they came in my room one day, they looked under the mattress, shit. I said, "I don't know what the hell you all lookin' for, but they ain't any way in the world I can get anything. Nobody's comin' here, and I don't know where I could find it. And you know, they watched me like a hawk.