There was nothing big in Liverpool; it wasn’t American. It was going poor, a very poor city, and tough. But people have a sense of humor because they are in so much pain, so they are always cracking jokes. They are very witty, and it’s an Irish place. It is where the Irish came when they ran out of potatoes, and it’s where black people were left or worked as slaves or whatever.
It is cosmopolitan, and it’s where the sailors would come home with the blues records from America on the ships. There is the biggest country & western following in England in Liverpool, besides London—always besides London, because there is more of it there.
I heard country & western music in Liverpool before I heard rock & roll. The people there—the Irish in Ireland are the same—they take their country & western music very seriously. There’s a big, heavy following of it. There were established folk, blues and country & western clubs in Liverpool before rock & roll, and we were like the new kids coming out.
I remember the first guitar I ever saw. It belonged to a guy in a cowboy suit in a province of Liverpool, with stars, and a cowboy hat and a big dobro. They were real cowboys, and they took it seriously. There had been cowboys long before there was rock & roll.
What do you think of America?
I love it, and I hate it. America is where it’s at. I should have been born in New York, I should have been born in the Village, that’s where I belong. Why wasn’t I born there? Paris was it in the eighteenth century, London I don’t think has ever been it except literarywise when Wilde and Shaw and all of them were there. New York was it.
I regret profoundly that I was not an American and not born in Greenwich Village. That’s where I should have been. It never works that way. Everybody heads toward the center; that’s why I’m here now. I’m here just to breathe it. It might be dying and there might be a lot of dirt in the air that you breathe, but this is where it’s happening. You go to Europe to rest, like in the country. It’s so overpowering, America, and I’m such a fuckin’ cripple that I can’t take much of it, it’s too much for me.
Yoko: He’s very New York, you know.
John: I’m frightened of it. People are so aggressive, I can’t take all that. I need to go home; I need to have a look at the grass. I’m always writing about my English garden. I need the trees and the grass; I need to go into the country because I can’t stand too much people.
You’re going back to London; what’s a rough picture of your immediate future, say the next three months?
I’d like to just vanish a bit. It wore me out, New York. I love it. I’m just sort of fascinated by it, like a fucking monster. Doing the films was a nice way of meeting a lot of people. I think we’ve both said and done enough for a few months, especially with this article. I’d like to get out of the way and wait till they all . . .
Do you have a rough picture of the next few years?
Oh, no, I couldn’t think of the next few years; it’s abysmal thinking of how many years there are to go, millions of them. I just play it by the week. I don’t think much ahead of a week.
Do you have a picture of “when I’m sixty-four”?
No, no. I hope we’re a nice old couple living off the coast of Ireland or something like that—looking at our scrapbook of madness.
RAY CHARLES
by Ben Fong-Torres
January 18, 1973
You lost your sight at five.
It didn’t happen like one day I could see a hundred miles and the next day I couldn’t see an inch. Each day for two years my sight was less and less. My mother was always real with me, and bein’ poor, you got to pretty much be honest with your children. We couldn’t afford no specialists. I was lucky I could get a doctor—that’s a specialist.
When you were losing your sight, did you try to take in as much as possible, to remember things?
I guess I was too small to really care that much. I knew there were things I liked to watch. I used to love to look at the sun. That’s a bad thing for my eyes, but I liked that. I used to love to look at the moon at night. I would go out in the backyard and stare at it. It just fascinated the hell out of me. And another thing that fascinated me that would scare most people is lightnin’. When I was a kid, I thought that was pretty. Anything like brightness, any kind of lights. I probably would’ve been a firebug or somethin’.
And there were colors. I was crazy about red. Always thought it was a beautiful color. I remember the basic colors. I don’t know nothin’ about chartreuse and all—I don’t know what the hell that is. But I know the black, green, yellow, brown and stuff like that. And naturally I remember my mother, who was pretty. God, she was pretty. She was a little woman. She must have been about four feet eleven, I guess, and when I was twelve or thirteen, I was taller and bigger than my mother, and she had this long pretty black hair, used to come way down her back. Pretty good-lookin’ chick, man [laughs].
A lot of people have asked you to define soul. I’d like to get a definition of beauty.
If you’re talkin’ about physical beauty, I would have to say that to me beauty is probably about the same thing that it means to most people. You look at them and the structure of their face, the way their skin is, and say like, a woman, the contour of her body, you know what I mean? The same way as I would walk out and feel the car. Put my hands on the lines of a car, and I’d know whether I’d like it or not from the way the designs of the lines are. As I said, I was fortunate enough to see until I was about seven, and I remember the things that I heard people calling beautiful.
How about beauty in music?
I guess you could call me a sentimentalist, man, really. I like Chopin or Sibelius. People who write softness, you know, and although Beethoven to me was quite heavy, he wrote some really touching songs, and I think that Moonlight Sonata—in spite of the fact that it wound up being very popular—it’s somethin’ about that, man, you could just feel the pain that this man was goin’ through. Somethin’ had to be happenin’ in that man. You know, he was very, very lonesome when he wrote that. From a technical point of view, I think Bach, if you really want to learn technique, that was the cat, ’cause he had all them fugues and things, your hands doin’ all kinda different things. Personally, outside of technique, I didn’t care for Bach.
Did you try to catch up with high school or college after you left school?
No. When I left school, I had to get out and really tough it, as you know, because my mother passed away when I was fifteen. I didn’t have no brothers or sisters. But my mama always taught me, “Look, you got to learn how to get along by yourself,” and she’s always tellin’ me, “Son, one of these days I’m gonna be dead, and you’re gonna need to know how to survive, because even your best friends, although they may want to do things for you; after all, they will have their own lives.” So at that point I started tryin’ to help myself. So what do I do to help myself? The thing I can do best, or figure I can do best, anyway. And that is sing or play the piano or both.
What else did they teach you in school that could have been applied to a career?
Well, I don’t know where I would have used it, but I can probably type as fast as any secretary. Well, not any. I can type about sixty to sixty-five words a minute, somethin’ like that, when I wanna. Then I can make all kinds of things with my hands. I can make chairs and brooms and mops and rugs and pocketbooks and belts and all kinds of things like that. So guess if I had to, I would go and buy me some leather. I love to work with my hands, and I’m sure that’s what I would do had I not played music, you see, because it’s the kind of a thing that you can use plenty of imagination in it, you know what I mean? And so I know how to do various kinds of stitchin’. Mexican stitchin’ and regular stitchin’ overlappin’ it and stuff. So I guess I would have—although it would have been a very meek livin’, I suppose. You can’t turn out a lot by hand.
Music was a meek living for a long time, too.
Yeah, it was really crawlin’. I became very ill a couple times. I suffere
d from malnutrition, you know. I was really messed up because I wasn’t eatin’ nothin’, and I wouldn’t beg. Two things you don’t do, you don’t beg and you don’t steal. That’s right.
What kind of music education did you have in Florida?
They taught you how to read the music, and I had to play Chopin, Beethoven, you know, the normal thing. Just music lessons. Not really theory. I don’t know what that is. It’s just, they taught me how to read music, and naturally how to use correct fingerin’, and once you’ve learned that you go from the exercises into little compositions into things like Chopin. That’s the way it went, although I was tryin’ to play boogie-woogie, man, ’cause I could always just about play anything I heard. My ear was always pretty good, but I did have a few music teachers, and so I do know music quite well, if you don’t mind my saying so. I was never taught to write music, but when I was twelve years old I was writing arrangements for a big band. Hell, if you can read music, you can write it, and I think certainly what helped me is that I’m a piano player, so I know chords. Naturally, I can hear chords, and I could always play just about anything I could hear. It was just a question of learning how to put it down on paper. I just studied how to write for horns on my own. Like, understanding that the saxophone is in different keys, and also, when I was goin’ to school I took up clarinet. See, I was a great fan of Artie Shaw. I used to think, “Man, ooh, he had the prettiest sound,” and he had so much feelin’ in his playin’, I always felt that, still feel it today.
Where were you hearing this boogie-woogie?
We lived next door for some years to a little general store in Greensville, Florida, where the kids could come in and buy soda pop and candy and the people could buy kerosene for their lamps, you know. And they had a jukebox in there. And the guy who owned it also had a piano. Wylie Pittman is the guy. Even when I was three and four years old, if I was out in the yard playin’, and if he started playin’ that piano, I would stop playin’ and run in there and jump on the stool. Normally, you figure a kid run in there like that and jump on the stool and start bangin’ on the piano, the guy would throw him off. “Say, get away from here, don’t you see me” . . . but he didn’t do that, I always loved that man for that. I was about five years old, and on my birthday he had some people there. He said, “RC”—this is what they called me then—“look, I want you to get up on the stool, and I want you to play for these people.” Now, let’s face it. I was five years old. They know damn well I wasn’t playin’. I’m just bangin’ on the keys, you understand. But that was encouragement that got me like that, and I think that the man felt that anytime a child is willin’ to stop playin’, you know, out in the yard and havin’ fun, to come in and hear somebody play the piano, evidently this child has music in his bones, you know. And he didn’t discourage me, which he could have, you know what I mean? Maybe I wouldn’t have been a musician at all, because I didn’t have a musical family, now remember that.
You were also able to hear ‘The Grand Ole Opry’ when you were a kid?
Yep, yeah, I always—every Saturday night, I never did miss it. I don’t know why I liked the music. I really thought that it was somethin’ about country music, even as a youngster—I couldn’t figure out what it was then, but I know what it is now. But then I don’t know why I liked it and I used to just love to hear Minnie Pearl, because I thought she was so funny.
How old were you then?
Oh, I guess I was about seven, eight, and I remember Roy Acuff and Gene Austin. Although I was bred in and around the blues, I always did have interest in other music, and I felt it was the closest music, really, to the blues—they’d make them steel guitars cry and whine, and it really attracted me. I don’t know what it is. Gospel and the blues are really, if you break it down, almost the same thing. It’s just a question of whether you’re talkin’ about a woman or God. I come out of the Baptist Church, and naturally whatever happened to me in that church is gonna spill over. So I think the blues and gospel music is quite synonymous to each other.
Big Bill Broonzy once said that “Ray Charles has got the blues he’s cryin’ sanctified. He’s mixin’ the blues with the spirituals. . . . He should be singin’ in a church.”
I personally feel that it was not a question of mixing gospel with the blues. It was a question of singin’ the only way I knew how to sing. This was not a thing where I was tryin’ to take the church music and make the blues out of it or vice versa. All I was tryin’ to do was sing the only way I knew how, period. I was raised in the church. I went to the Sunday school. I went to the morning service, and that’s where they had the young people doin’ their performin’, and I went to night service, and I went to all the revival meetings. My parents said, “You will go to church.” I mean they ain’t no if about that. So singin’ in the church and hearin’ this good singin’ in the church and also hearin’ the blues, I guess this was the only way I could sing, outside of loving Nat Cole so well, and I tried to imitate him very much. When I was starting out, I loved the man so much that’s why I can understand a lot of other artists who come up and try to imitate me. You know, when you love somebody so much and you feel what they’re doin’ is close to what you feel, some of that rubs off on you—so I did that.
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?
Well, when I was doing what you’re talkin’ about right now, my only thing, 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, and, of course, later I had to pay a fine for it—I didn’t care. I was only about seventeen 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 was in there and 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. I didn’t care. I would have done it for nothin’. 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. You know, wow, my own voice on a record [laughs].
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 mediocre—it 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. I was too scared for that. So what I wanted to do was pick a town that was far away from Florida, but not huge, and Seattle really was about as far away as I could get. All across the U.S., and, of course, it wasn’t a huge town, half a million people or somethin’ like that.
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.
Why did you leave Atlantic? Jerry Wexler told me it was a “shock” to him.
Well, you know the people at Atlantic—Jerry, Ahmet, Nesuhi . . . I love all the people over there. 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. I mean, the thing was that, well, if ABC was really seriously going to do it, Atlantic just couldn’t match it, based on the original contract I had with them. But I let them know, because, you know that Jerry and I are the best of friends because I didn’t do anything sneaky, in the dark, or nothin’ like that. 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.”
The Rolling Stone interviews Page 8