When he came back a few minutes later, we sat in complete silence for a while. He was very solemn, every now and then reaching up to wipe away some tears. After a couple of minutes, he started rewinding the tape and running it again. In my mind the only song I could think of was “Drown in My Own Tears.” I could see him immerse himself in the music, listening to his own voice. The tape would end, there would be a moment of silence, and he would start playing it again. Gradually his tears stopped. I realized in that moment that the only way he could deal with the turmoil in his soul was to listen to his own voice singing the things he couldn’t say. He went back to his music, for it was there that the pain was lifted. I had never seen him break down like that before. It was so painful to watch, and I didn’t know what to say to him. I began to understand how hard it was for him to love somebody when everyone he had loved had left him alone or died. His mother, George, Mary Jane. Everyone he was close to passed away. There was nothing I could do for him except sit next to him and listen to the music, hearing his voice that day in a whole new way.
During those weekends in the studio, I came to understand that all of my father’s relationships were founded in music. The sound of my mother’s voice singing had drawn him to her before they ever met. Sometimes I wonder, was it his soul and emotions that he poured into his music that attracted his women to him? He couldn’t come to my room for fatherly talks like other fathers, but at the studio, he could speak to me about life, and music. I learned that the only way I could get close to him was to talk about the thing that he loved most, and that was music.
I made a point during those years to go down to the studio and watch the band rehearsals as often as I could. The studio was big enough to hold an entire twenty-piece orchestra. I saw the tryouts for the band and watched my father work tirelessly, driving the musicians into exhaustion as he tried to make the sound perfect. I began to absorb the rhythm of the office, the rhythm of the seasons. Every February and March the band rehearsed as they prepared to go on the road. Every summer they toured from city to city. Every winter there was a holiday concert. And every year, around Christmas, my father would come home for two months before the cycle started again.
Watching my dad work with the band was quite an experience. My father was a notorious perfectionist. He was very hard on his musicians, and some of them resented him for it. Dad knew exactly how he wanted everything to sound, and if a musician didn’t understand what he wanted, he would go over that part until the musician got it. It was all about getting it exactly the way my dad wanted it. I remember watching rehearsal one day when my father was auditioning drummers for the road. This young Jewish kid, not much older than I was, came in. He sat down at the drums and started playing with the band, and he was really good, a young Buddy Rich.
I turned to my dad and said, “Dad, this guy’s really good.”
My father was shaking his head. “Yeah, he’s good, but he’s not readin’ the charts.” He was referring to the charts for the musicians to follow.
I said, “What do you mean?”
Dad said, “He’s not readin’ anything.”
The kid was very good, but he had been listening to the other drummers auditioning and improvised instead of following the chart. That would never cut it with my father. No matter how good you were, if you could not read his charts and follow his directions exactly, you wouldn’t last.
My father also had a particular way he wanted to record. He always recorded the band first, before the vocals and piano. Until they got used to playing for him, musicians were often shocked by the recording sessions. They were used to showing up, playing, and going home. It was never that simple with my father. He would make everyone work until he got exactly what he wanted, no matter how long it took. Nobody could get anything by him when it came to the music and the chords. He could hear every note and see every color of the spectrum in his music. My dad could listen to all seventeen pieces at one time and pick out every instrument. He’d say, “Drums, what are you doing? Can you read music or not? I don’t understand.” He could distinctly identify somebody who wasn’t following the chart. He would stand over a guitar player and tell him how he wanted it to sound. The guitar player would say, “This? How’s this?” And my dad would tell him no and demonstrate again. Hours would go by, and the band sometimes sat in the studio going over a song again and again until he was satisfied.
Part of the reason my father wanted the musicians to play with such precision was that he didn’t want the band to get in the way of the Raelettes. He wanted the timing to be perfect. A drummer might not be a brilliant soloist, but if he could keep time exactly the way my father wanted, he was the man my dad would hire. Dave Braithwaite said they had a bass player for a while that wasn’t all that good of a musician, but he was very good at following my dad’s charts. He never got in the way of the Raelettes, or my father.
It took a long time for the engineers to figure out what my dad was doing with his singing. Dave called my father’s approach “the art of singing.” Once an engineer figured it out, he became invaluable. My dad would say, “Nope, we didn’t get it done,” and Dave would stop the tape. Often it would be just a tiny thing like adding an “oh.” My father would count with the tape, and Dave would punch in the changes. It was very time-consuming, but the results were usually worth it. When I asked Dave what he learned about singing from my father, he replied, “There’s a lot of music within the music.” He watched my father eke out everything he could from the music without being repetitive. If you listen to some of the records, you’ll hear the same line come through several times, and each time it is different. Dave talks about the way my father sang “Georgia.” When it came time to record, he made dozens of small changes, like singing “I say Georgia” instead of just the one word “Georgia.” All those hours spent in the studio—replaying, modifying, punching in again—produced the unmistakable sound that was my father’s, and are what made him so great.
Everyone including me loved the unique way my father blended R & B, gospel, and country music. In 1962 he’d released two volumes called Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. It caused a sensation at the time among people who thought of him as strictly a soul or R & B artist. But a big part of my father’s genius was his determination not to be pigeonholed. He loved music, all genres of music, and he refused to be limited by other people’s expectations. What people failed to understand when he first turned to country music was that it was in his heart. He was a huge Hank Williams fan. He had grown up in the Deep South listening to country and western and gospel music. My father had loved singing gospel with my mother and Cecil Shaw in the early days. Gospel was in his bones too. In gospel music, the choir sings and the congregation answers. That’s what gave my father the idea of repeating lines in reverse order, backup singers first, him second.
Terry Howard remembers the call-and-response technique my dad took from gospel music. The background singers would sing the lead line, and then my father would sing the back line. He started using the technique when he recorded “I Can’t Stop Loving You” as a country song. The singers led with “I can’t stop loving you,” and my dad came in with “It’s useless to say …” Fans thought that Ray Charles singing country music was a ridiculous idea until they heard him perform it. “I Can’t Stop Loving You” shot to the top of the pop, R & B, and country charts and stayed at number one for a while. The call-and-response turnaround that came from his country roots became one of my father’s musical trademarks.
During the height of my father’s music and genius, he was surrounded by the brilliance of the musicians who worked with him—Hank Crawford, Leroy Cooper, Fathead Newman, and most of all, Sid Feller—who made it all work. During their years together, the music seemed to flow naturally from the chemistry they generated. Those years were magical, though I don’t know if my father realized how special they were at the time. I always believed that Sid was one of the keys to my father’s huge success in the sixties and
early seventies. Terry believes it was Sid’s orchestration, putting all of the elements together, that made it possible for my father to achieve the sound he did. Sid arranged for my dad, both in the studio and on the road. He knew what my father wanted. He understood that my father’s singing had to be perfect and the band had to be perfect, and he knew what “perfect” meant to my dad. Sid worked with him better than anyone else. He understood what my father was trying to accomplish and was not argumentative about it. As Terry puts it, “Sid was able to be in the studio without Ray and still be Ray.” Sid would storyboard the ideas or put them into basic note form and then give the arrangement to my dad to tighten up. Sid’s arrangements were brilliant. When Sid and my dad got together, it was two geniuses at work. They blended together like the music itself. Sid knew how to orchestrate the arrangements to make the sounds blend perfectly. The records my father made at Atlantic before his collaboration with Sid were powerful, raw, and intense. “What’d I Say” was sheer raw power. “Georgia,” “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” and “You Don’t Know Me” were more refined, more melodic. Sid was there all through the ABC-Paramount years, through the high point and new direction of my father’s music. It was never quite the same after Sid left. Their music together became the standard and, like all great music, stood the test of time.
It always surprised me that my father was interested in my thoughts about music. I believe he interacted with me because he could only hear the music that was inside his head. He often asked me what music I liked, whose albums I collected. I believed all great musicians listened to other great musicians around them and those who preceded them. He didn’t understand some of the rock-and-roll music I listened to, like the Rolling Stones, Traffic, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix. He did like the Beatles. We talked about which Beatles songs we both liked, and ultimately he recorded some of them himself. I loved his versions of “Yesterday” and “Eleanor Rigby.” All of my father’s arrangements of the Beatles’ music were fantastic, and he loved the writing of Paul McCartney and John Lennon.
My father believed in my ability to do whatever I wanted to do in life, but he never pushed me in a particular direction. Neither of my parents tried to mold my interests. They did not believe in pushing their children into a profession. When it came to music, my father would only say, “Maybe you’d like to try the piano” or “Maybe you’d be good with the soundboard.” He never came right out and told me what to do. I never had a clear sense of direction about a musical career for myself. I did need his direction.
I didn’t want to sing, but I did want to play. My dad got me a Fender Rhodes piano one Christmas, and I played it for a while. He never had the patience or time to sit down at the instrument and teach me, so he introduced me to Marvin Jenkins, who became my piano teacher. Marvin was a little man who looked like an African American Beatle. He dressed like one of the Beatles and his hair was styled like Paul McCartney’s. I believed Marvin was the missing Beatle. He was a good teacher, but I could never stay focused. My talent was evident, but I did not devote enough time to practicing because of sports.
I started playing the drums around the age of fifteen and on one occasion my father walked by the den while I was listening to some jazz and fooling around on a drum pad. He asked me when I’d started playing the drums, and I told him I’d been playing with a friend’s drum set for a while. The next thing I knew, he bought a Pearl drum set for me. He introduced me to Clarence Johnston, an excellent jazz drummer, and I started learning jazz drumming. I loved playing the drums, and Mr. Johnston was a strict, disciplined teacher. He and I spoke about me playing with my father’s orchestra one day if I worked hard. But playing drums for my father was not a high priority for me. He was famous for being brutal on drummers. Being a drummer for my father would have been a nightmare. Also, I wanted to play jazz fusion. By now I was listening to Billy Cobham, Weather Report, Stanley Clarke, Return to Forever, Bob James, Herbie Hancock, Jaco Pastorius, and Miles Davis. Fusion took my mind in a whole new direction, but I was also deeply committed to sports. Nevertheless, I would continue to play the drums. Every now and then I would have my own jam sessions at Southridge. We thought our sound was cool, but the truth of the matter was we sounded like an orchestra warming up.
Learning and playing music when you are Ray Charles’s namesake was a daunting task. I knew that even though my father would never push me, he wanted me to be in his business. I believe I had the genes, but I would never strengthen or develop my God-given talent. Becoming a musician required more attention and commitment than I had at the time. When I look back now, it’s hard to forgive myself for my lack of focus. I had all the opportunity in the world to nurture the music inside of me, and I still long to play.
I never found a musical career, but I inherited a musical legacy nonetheless. Music was my father’s greatest gift to me. It provided my father and me with a common language that enabled us to reach out to each other. Music was his lifeblood, the air he breathed. I do not think he would have survived without it. It got him through the hard times and enabled him to survive the memories that still clung to him. He could escape into a place where he could just be. The music was the thread that bound together his past, his present, his loves, his pain, and his dreams. It was the light through which he could see. When I remember my father in the studio with me, it’s like being in a time capsule. I can still see him sitting at the console, framed by the amber light, listening to sounds only he could hear.
Music is my therapy and my refuge, as it was for my father. I came to understand why he loved music so much because I too could find that perfect melody or fragment of a lyric somewhere inside the music that helped me understand and cope with the joys and pains of my own life. I cannot express myself musically in the way my father did, but the music still runs through my body like a current. For years I woke up with music in my head. My mind remains a kaleidoscope of beautiful melodies and the colors of the changing seasons of life. I carry my father’s music inside of me. It will never die.
CHAPTER 12
Trouble the Water
Jordan’s water is chilly
and cold.
God’s gonna trouble the
water.
—TRADITIONAL GOSPEL SONG
OUR HOME ON SOUTHRIDGE WAS LIKE A CASTLE, A fortress built to keep us all safe. It was at Southridge that we left behind the illness and death that had haunted Hepburn. It was at Southridge that my father got well. Southridge was our Camelot. What we couldn’t know at the time was that Southridge would also be the place where the foundation of our family would finally crack. It happened slowly, like fissures spreading through a rock. By the time I finished high school, the walls of our home would come crashing down around us.
When I graduated from the eighth grade at the Linfield School after five years with Mrs. Reynolds, I begged my parents to let me leave private school and go to Westchester High School. Westchester was a large public high school with a good sports program and all of the school activities and prom night that go along with a traditional high-school experience. I loved Mrs. Reynolds dearly, and it was hard to leave, but I knew it was time to move on. Mrs. Reynolds remained my friend and mentor, and I continued to visit her through my college years. But I was a teenager by then, and I wanted to experience the variety of people and opportunities that Westchester High could give me.
At first Westchester was a real adjustment. I was accustomed to a self-paced curriculum with a lot of individual attention, so my transfer to Westchester presented new challenges. Suddenly I had to navigate a large campus and go to a different location for each class period. The classes were larger, and I now had to relate to several different teachers at the same time. It took me a while to adjust to the new demands and find a routine for my classes, homework, and sports. After the first few months, though, I settled into the new rhythm of Westchester just fine.
I also found myself dealing with my ethnicity in a new way. Westchester had begun to integrate onl
y a few years before, gradually shifting from an all-white campus to a multiethnic one. All of the African American students at school congregated together. Most of them had a very different view of the world from mine. I was used to going to school primarily with white classmates, and my friends in my neighborhood came from upper-middle-class black families. I moved comfortably into my new environment as I was accustomed to having a lot of expectations placed on me. Some of the African American students at Westchester were bused in from different neighborhoods in South Central Los Angeles. They brought a new atmosphere to Westchester High School, and I wanted to fit in with the other African American students. I wanted to walk the walk and talk the talk. Fortunately, there were some wonderful teachers who were mentors. Then there was the vice principal, Mr. Childress.
Mr. Childress was very strict. When Westchester was first integrated, he would walk the halls between classes, trying to keep an eye on things to avoid what he thought would become a conflict. He was down on any students who didn’t follow the rules or do their best. They got an earful from him. I had my days with Mr. Childress as well; other African American students simply hated him. They thought he was a racist. I believed that some days, too. But Mr. Childress was all about order and control. He was strict but fair, and he wanted us all to do our best. Whatever people said, everyone did their best work under Mr. Childress, and there was order on campus. Whenever I did well on something, he would smile at me and say, “Good job, Robinson.” It felt fortunate that we had someone who cared about our future.
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