The fruit of their labors speaks for itself. During the first four years we lived on Hepburn, my father put out a breathtaking procession of hits: “Night Time Is the Right Time,” “What’d I Say,” “Georgia on My Mind,” “Hit the Road, Jack,” “I’ve Got News for You,” “One Mint Julep,” “Unchain My Heart,” “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” “You Are My Sunshine,” and the tracks that made up the album The Genius of Ray Charles. All of them made the top 10 on both the pop and R & B charts. In 1962, “I Can’t Stop Loving You” was number one on the pop, R & B, country, and British charts all at the same time.
I spent countless hours between the ages of four and eight listening to my father’s music while sitting on the stairs or in the hall by his office door. Sometimes I walked back and forth as I listened. Cigarette smoke drifted under the door, and the towel hanging on the knob warned me and my brothers not to knock. All day and night when my father was not on the road, music would flow from his office. The distinct sound of my father’s early arrangements would fill the hall, and I would hear him singing. There would be the sound of one finger hitting a piano—bink, bink, bop. I would hear snatches of conversation through the door, my father saying, “Listen to this, man. See how this goes. What do you think about this, Hank?” Every so often my mother would come up the stairs with trays of food and take it inside. As she opened the door to carry in food and drinks, I would catch glimpses of my father next to his reel-to-reel recorder. If I was really lucky, they would rehearse in the living room. He’d have his whole band crammed in there around the piano. I would watch them play, mesmerized, the music vibrating through me. It was moving. It was magical.
Some days he would be in his office alone, playing new pieces on his reel-to-reel, trying to decide if he had the arrangement right. At night I would knock on his door, but the only answer would be the music emanating from the room. I would wake in the middle of the night to hear strange sounds coming from his Ampex recorder, something between a whir and a squeak as it was rewound over and over.
I heard my father’s music many other places as well. He would bring my mother copies of his recordings as they were released. In the beginning the recordings were the old 78s, and later they were 33s. My brothers and I heard him on the radio while riding in my mother’s car, and we’d shout “Daddy!” and sing along. I would see his face on the covers of record albums he brought home. My mother kept magazines around the house, and I would leaf through them. She would read the articles in Life, Ebony, Billboard, The Saturday Evening Post, and Jet, but I would focus on the pictures of my dad and wonder what the captions said. Sometimes he would be on the cover, and other times he was the featured story.
It was especially exciting to see him on television. Those were the rare occasions that my mother would let us stay up. I saw him on The Dinah Shore Show when I was seven, and later I watched him co-host The Mike Douglas Show.
I also became very good at mimicking my father when he was performing. We would put on talent shows with my cousins and some of our friends from the neighborhood to entertain our parents and relatives. I, of course, was always “the great Ray Charles.” I loved to do “Hit the Road, Jack.” I knew it cold and performed it complete with all my father’s inflections and mannerisms, including the trademark twitch. I loved to sing along with his records by myself, too.
Of all the songs my father composed and performed during those years, “You Don’t Know Me” is the one that remains burned into my soul. I was six years old when my father composed it, and it was the first time he let me into his private musical world, inside his office where he composed those great songs. I stood between his legs as he sat in his favorite chair working on the song. He explained the different instruments to me as each played. I stood there, captivated, as he took my fingers and ran them over the controls on the reel-to-reel recorder to stop and rewind while we listened over and over again. I remember the cigarette he held with his thumb and two fingers and the scent of the smoke as it swirled around us. He sat there in his white T-shirt, with his glasses off and his face vulnerable, as I leaned against him and felt the music vibrate through my body and fill my soul. I knew even then that his music was something special, a gift from God illuminating the darkness in which my father lived each day.
My father’s music remains embedded in my mind and soul. At a very early age, I knew his music was influential, that it was moving, that it was important. I knew it from the way people spoke about him. And I knew it at a young age when I watched him in concerts. Chills would run through me as I closed my eyes and listened to his music fill the concert halls. My father gave me a great gift. He shared his music with me and taught me how to listen. I learned to listen to everything, the richness of the violins and horns, the arrangement itself, and the notes that change the mood of the song. I did not know at the time how my father’s music was shaping me. I did not inherit his musical gift, but I did inherit some part of his musical soul. I still have melodic dreams of orchestrations that are complete in my mind. But I still wake up longing to write on paper what I hear in my head, and I am left with a feeling of profound emptiness, as though there were a hole in my life. I still listen to music the way my father taught me, just as my granddaughter listens to his music the way I did as a child. My father is still with us, alive in our hearts and his music.
These are the memories, the images that I lived with when I was growing up. All the famous photos and album covers that lined the walls of his office remain clear in my mind. My father playing his sax with Fathead, Ray Charles at Newport, Ray Charles and Betty Carter, The Genius Hits the Road, Genius + Soul = Jazz, Ingredients in a Recipe for Soul, and Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. A photo of Frank Sinatra and my father together. My dad practicing with the band, laughing, his head thrown back and his arms wrapped around his body. And my favorite, Daddy in his white silk undershirt, without his glasses, smoke curling up from his cigarette and a pensive smile on his lips. I spent hours looking at those photos and album covers. I knew he was more than just our father; he was Ray Charles.
CHAPTER 7
Pray On, My Child
Pray on, my child,
I need Jesus to carry me
home.
—THE CECIL SHAW SINGERS, LEAD
TENOR, DELLA BEATRICE ANTWINE
WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES AND REMEMBER HEPBURN AVENUE, I see a burst of color—trees, flowers, beautiful homes. But my memory is selective, for behind every tree and house a shadow loomed. When we began filming the scenes set at Hepburn for the movie Ray, I expected to be flooded with happy memories. Instead I was overwhelmed with panic as the reality of those years started coming back. Chills ran through my body, and I would have to check my emotions. Hepburn was not the idyllic place I wanted to remember. The year I turned six, the fearful apparitions haunting my imagination at night started to become real. It began when I found out in the worst possible way that the father I worshipped was mortal.
WHENEVER MY FATHER was in town, we would always hug and kiss him before we went to bed. I would not go to sleep unless I had kissed my father good night. But one night my mother wouldn’t let me go to his office to kiss him at bedtime. My dad’s twitching and scratching had been much worse than usual that afternoon and evening. My mother had sent him to his office hours earlier and told him to stay there until he felt better. When bedtime came and I wanted to kiss him good night, my mom said no. She said Daddy wasn’t feeling well, but I could have two hugs and two kisses in the morning to make up for it. David and I were already in our pajamas, and she took us upstairs, tucked us in, and kissed us good night.
But I couldn’t sleep. I still wanted to see my dad. As I lay in bed thinking about it, I started to hear a banging noise coming from his office. There was a steady knocking, as though he were hitting the wall. I was curious, so I decided to disobey my mother and see what he was doing. I got out of bed and crept down the hall. I knocked, and when there was no response, I opened the door a crack and peered
in. When I saw my father, I froze in fear.
There was blood everywhere. The walls were splattered with blood like someone had fired a paint gun, there was blood all over his glass desk top, and there was a big puddle of blood on the floor. Across the room my father stood, leaning against the wall and twitching violently. Blood streamed from his wrist. His white shirt sleeve and cuff were completely soaked. He was slinging his arm back and forth like he was trying to shake something off, and every time he slung his arm, blood flew everywhere. He was completely unaware that he was bleeding. I yelled, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” but he showed no awareness that I was there.
I took off running downstairs to the den where my mother was watching television. She was eight months pregnant with Bobby at the time. I was yelling incoherently about Daddy and the office, and at first my mother thought I was having a tantrum because she hadn’t let me kiss my dad. She took my hand and pulled me up the stairs, scolding and telling me I was going right back to bed. Meanwhile, I was screaming hysterically, “Daddy! Daddy! Blood, Mommy, blood!”
By the time we got upstairs, blood was beginning to seep under the office door. My mother let go of my hand and ran to the door, pushing it all the way open. When she saw my father, she shouted, “Ray! Ray!” and ran to him, but he was too high, and he didn’t hear her. She rushed into the bathroom, grabbed two towels, and returned. Shouting at him to keep his arm still, she applied pressure to try and stop the bleeding. She called to me to go to my bedroom and wake David. We were both to put on our slippers and jackets. She must have phoned Dr. Foster from Dad’s office after I left. She could not call for an ambulance because my dad was home out on bail, awaiting his pending court date. With the heroin in his system, he would have been taken to jail.
When I emerged in the hall a couple of minutes later, dragging my confused brother behind me, my mother hurried us down the stairs to the front door. I could still hear my father banging around in his office. My mom said we were taking Daddy to the doctor. She got us settled in the backseat of the Cadillac and then rushed back into the house. A few minutes later she came outside with my father. He was still thrashing aimlessly as my mother struggled with him and tried to keep two blood-soaked towels pressed against his wrist. She was so pregnant that she could barely walk, and I do not know how she got my father down the stairs. She later told me that she’d had to fight him, alternately pulling and punching him to make him move. Without realizing it, he had elbowed her in the stomach several times as they struggled.
She forced Dad into the front seat and closed the door just as Hank Crawford and Milt Turner drove up. They had come to bring my father some arrangements. My mother spoke with them briefly, then got into the driver’s seat and backed out of the driveway. Hank and Milt followed us in their car.
My father was still bleeding, twitching, and flailing around as we drove. My mom kept pressing the bloody towels back against his wrist every time he threw them off. It took fifteen or twenty minutes to get to Dr. Foster’s office, but it seemed like an eternity. David and I were huddled fearfully in the backseat.
When we finally got to the doctor’s office, Hank and Milt came in with us. Dr. Foster and his nurse were waiting. We went through the reception area and into Dr. Foster’s office. Dr. Foster pulled up chairs for us as he instructed his nurse to take my father into an examining room. He was talking to my mother when he caught sight of Hank and Milt. They had finally gotten a good look at my father’s wound in the light. He was soaked with blood. Dr. Foster saw their faces and said, “Uh-oh.”
We all turned to look at them. Hank and Milt were as white as a sheet. My mother said, “Sweet Lord, they’re going to faint.”
Dr. Foster quickly took them into another examination room and told them to sit down and put their heads between their knees. Then he called the nurse and told her to stay with them until they felt better. Unfortunately, every time they tried to sit up straight, they began to pass out again. The nurse didn’t dare leave them alone. Meanwhile, Dr. Foster was struggling with my father in the examining room, trying to get a good look at the wound. When my mother went to see what was happening, he told her that he was having trouble examining my dad’s arm without the nurse to hold it down. My mother immediately said she would take the nurse’s place if he would tell her what to do.
Dr. Foster replied, “Absolutely not, Della. You cannot handle all this blood. You’re eight months pregnant. Now get out of here.”
My mother replied, “That’s my husband, and I can stay if I want to. Now tell me what to do.”
Dr. Foster could not sedate my father while he had so much heroin in his system, and he could not risk surgery, either. My father had severed a tendon and artery, and the operating procedure was delicate. If it wasn’t done properly, my father could lose the use of his hand. The best Dr. Foster could do right then was to stop the bleeding and prevent further injury until the drugs wore off. In the morning, when my dad had come down, he could be admitted to the hospital for surgery. My mother held my father’s arm still while Dr. Foster sterilized the wound and closed the gash temporarily. Then he wrapped the wound tightly in several layers of gauze and told my mother she would have to keep my father still to prevent more bleeding. My father had already lost a dangerous amount of blood.
Meanwhile, my brother and I waited in Dr. Foster’s office. It was eerie being in the deserted building at night. I could hear Dr. Foster’s voice behind the door, and every now and then I would hear the nurse minister to Hank and Milt. David had fallen asleep in the chair. At three years old, he was too little to understand what was happening. There was a lot that I didn’t understand, either, but I was old enough to know that something was seriously wrong with my dad, and I was scared to death.
Finally Dr. Foster came out of the office with my father. Dad was holding his bandaged wrist up, the way you do to stop bleeding. He was still wearing his bloody clothing, and there was blood on my mother’s clothes, too. I stared wordlessly at my father, hoping for some reassurance from him, but there was nothing. He just stood there still twitching, in another world.
My mother held out her arms to comfort me as I went to her. “Your father’s going to be okay, baby. He’s okay.”
No one said a word on the ride home. My mother reached over and stilled my father’s arm whenever he tried to move it. At some point, I fell asleep. It was well past midnight by then. It had been hours since I had first gone to bed. When we finally got home, my mother waved off Hank and Milt, who had recovered enough to follow us home. They drove away, and my mother shook us gently awake and guided me up the stairs with David sound asleep on her shoulder. “Your father’s going to be all right. I need you to go to bed now,” she told me softly. I crawled under the covers and immediately fell into a deep sleep. My mother was up all night with my father, watching over him and holding his arm still whenever he began to thrash, but this time, I didn’t hear a thing.
The next day my father was admitted to the hospital for the delicate surgery. He had to wear a cast on his wrist for several weeks afterward. The hospital was told it was an accident resulting from my father stumbling into the glass-top desk in his office. The injury was played down in the press. When my dad wanted to go back on the road, Dr. Foster cautioned him against it, but Dad was worried about the effect of a hiatus on his career. He didn’t want people to think he couldn’t play anymore. They ultimately compromised: Dr. Foster would agree to let him go as long as my father had continuing medical care. My dad would hire Dr. Foster to accompany him on the road for a few weeks. Dr. Foster was able to find someone to sub for him at his practice, and shortly thereafter he met my father on the road. For several weeks, he traveled with my father, changing casts and treating him until the wrist was completely healed. My father’s wrist would be all right. His wrist healed and he was able to play the piano as well as ever.
Gradually the house returned to normal. The blood stain remained, an ugly reminder of what had happened that evening. Once my
mother had the carpet replaced and the wall cleaned, no visible traces of the accident remained. But the horror of that night never completely left me. Whenever my mother or I opened the office door, I felt myself flinch, afraid to look for fear I would find my father dead of an overdose. His music was no longer the only reason I listened at the door. After that terrible night, I listened for my father whenever he was in there alone, creeping to the door and putting my ear to it to make sure he was moving around. I wondered if my father understood what had happened. Did he know I had saved his life that night? Did he know God had given him another chance at life?
IF MY FAT HER was the center of our world, my mother was the one who held our world together. She was so incredibly strong, and she endured more pain than most people could survive.
Looking back, I cannot begin to imagine how she coped with it all. The husband she loved so deeply was blind, a serious heroin addict, and a womanizer. Between my birth and our departure from Hepburn Avenue nine years later, my father was arrested for drug possession four times, each arrest more serious than the one before. My father’s affairs caused her tremendous pain and were a strain on our family. Not only did she have to endure the knowledge that there were other women; she had to live with reports of his other children as well. A few months after my brother David was born, Margie Hendricks, one of the Raelettes, gave birth to my father’s third son, Charles Wayne Hendricks. Within weeks of my brother Bobby’s birth, Mae Mosely Lyles gave birth to my half sister Raenee. Two years later Sandra Jean Betts gave birth to my half sister Sheila, naming Ray Charles as the father. Both Mae and Sandra Jean filed suits asking for child support. My mother endured the humiliation of my father being dragged through two very public, seamy paternity claims. Both times she found the courage to attend the court hearings to show public support for my father. I don’t know how in the world she was able to face it. Both times he lost after graphic testimony about his sexual behavior and tearful claims by the women that he had told them he loved them more than he loved my mother.
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