And of course, there were the affairs. Some of the women referred to themselves as “Mrs. Ray Charles.” The gossip columns ran bits identifying other women as Mrs. Charles while he was on the road. There were countless one-night stands on the road, and much of that gossip continued to get back to my mother. Two very public paternity suits were tried over the years, and my mother had the humiliation of sitting in court to show her support while other women testified that Mr. Charles was married in name only and had told them that the child in question was more important to him than his legal children. My dad ultimately fathered twelve children. Articles about his womanizing continued to appear in the gossip columns throughout the years on Southridge. He was always talking to us about the importance of family and of respecting our mother. I guess this was a classic case of do as I say, not as I do.
My father’s appetite for women was insatiable. Whatever the reason, his obsession with women caused pain for so many and ultimately pushed my mother to the breaking point. I watched her struggle for years. I would hear her crying often. She became increasingly sad and irritable, harder to get along with. Vernon was caught in the middle. He found himself trying to bridge the divide between my dad and my mother, keeping her informed after she was shut out. Vernon was loyal to my father and didn’t want to betray his confidence, but at the same time he loved our family and tried his best to take care of us. He was our confidant, our protector, and our dear friend. During this same time, Mother was struggling with my grandmother’s health problems. The years of alcoholism had taken a toll on Grams. As her body began to fail, her mind was affected. She started having delirium tremens, popularly known as the dt’s, and they became increasingly frightening. She became paranoid and started to hallucinate. My mother, terrified, called Dr. Foster, our family physician and friend, once again. Dr. Foster told her that my grandmother had to be hospitalized and put on a psych hold immediately or she would die. In great distress, my mother had Grams committed for a week. My grandmother slowly recovered and came out of the hospital seven days later, tired but clearly in a healthier frame of mind. But she never forgave my mother for the humiliation of being put in a psych ward. My mother now had to live not only with the fear that it would happen again but with the pain of her mother’s blame.
After nearly two decades of being the good and faithful wife, my mother started to find herself again. She had always followed the Bible’s injunction to submit to your husband, and she firmly believed that my father was rightfully the decision maker and head of the household, so she had always tried to accept my father’s indiscretions and commit herself completely to him and to her children. As the years passed, though, it became more and more difficult for her to do so. My father had the continual adulation from his fans, and in his studio he was the king, maybe even the dictator. The money controlled everyone and everything in his world. When he got home, he expected my mother to be at his beck and call as well. Now, however, she wanted more independence. After years of being housebound, she wanted a life of her own. My parents started arguing more and more. She was starting to say no to him, and he didn’t like it.
As my mother’s health improved, she wanted a chance to get some exercise and go out with her friends, so she became part of a women’s bowling team. One night my father came home and found her on her way to a bowling tournament. He insisted that she skip the tournament and stay home with him. She refused. They began to argue, and the argument escalated into a screaming match. Then he got physical with her.
I had heard the shouting, and I knew something was wrong. My father came to my bedroom to explain. He was furious that my mother was threatening him with divorce. All I could do was vent my own anger. “Dad, all these years she’s put up with all the other women, the newspapers, the drugs, the other children, everything. What did you expect? That she’d put up with it forever?” When my father replied that I was taking my mother’s side, I told him that I was sorry he felt that way.
That was the end of the marriage as far as my mother was concerned. She had tolerated all of his behavior, but she would not tolerate his hurting her physically. She hired an attorney and began the process of legal separation. He had always said she was the love of his life, and he thought they would be together forever. Somehow he had convinced himself that his affairs shouldn’t matter to her as long as she was his wife and he took care of her. I wondered how he would have felt if my mother had had an affair with another man. Yet he couldn’t understand her feelings. I loved him, but he just didn’t get it.
All of our lives, our family had been number three. His first priority was his music, and that took most of his time and energy. His second priority was his women he spent so much time with. His third priority, our family, was waiting to greet him with open arms at home, as we always had. My mother loved and protected him at a great cost to herself. She always had his back. If she felt he needed to be confronted, she would do so, but she never let anyone else criticize him. Not even us. To this day, if anyone says anything critical of my father, she will stand up for him, and she still reminds us that he loved us in his own way and gave us a life second to none. But eventually her life with my father wore her down. I don’t know how she dealt with the threats, the drugs, and the humiliation for so many years. He took their marriage for granted. He thought she would always be there, no matter what, and for many years she thought the same thing. He loved her until he died, but I don’t know if he ever truly understood what he had in her. He could not have had a better woman at his side.
The long process of my parents’ separation and divorce began that year. It would ultimately drag on for four years, shaking the foundation of our family to the core. There’s a parable in the Bible about the foundation a house is built on. The foolish build their house on the sand of their own sin and confusion. The wise build their house on the rock of God’s word, and when the storms come, the house is shaken but not destroyed. Our lives and our beautiful home on Southridge had been built on sand. As each storm hit, the foundation was gradually washed away. Our home collapsed, and as the Scriptures say, great was the sound of its fall. I felt like the walls of my life were coming down around me again.
CHAPTER 13
Dancing with the Devil
A fever-minded young
man with infinite
potential …
Dancing with the devil,
smoked until his eyes
Would bleed.
—IMMORTAL TECHNIQUE
IN THE SUMMER OF 1973, THE LIFE I HAD KNOWN WAS ENDING. The foundation of my family had been damaged and our lives would never be the same. I was anxious to escape the turmoil at Southridge, eager to break free from the anger and confusion at home and strike out on my own. I had just graduated from Westchester High School and was preparing to begin college in the fall. I remember waking up one morning that summer with the voice of Marvin Gaye on the radio singing “What’s Goin’ On.” The song echoed the sign of the times around me. Our nation was in the middle of a bloody war in Vietnam. I had just registered for the draft on my eighteenth birthday a few weeks before. Some of my classmates were leaving for Vietnam; some of them never came back. Nixon was in the White House, and the nation was about to endure the national disgrace of Watergate. African Americans continued to struggle for civil rights. The Nixon tapes would soon reveal the contempt that our own president had for the people of my race. It seemed like there was turmoil everywhere I turned. I sought change in my life, to go far away from all the tension and misery.
I had decided to attend Pasadena City College, a two-year college, with the intention of transferring to the University of Southern California. I was happy with my decision to attend PCC because I had done enough research on the school to discover that it was one of the best junior colleges in the nation. Its graduates went on to transfer to the top universities. Also running through the track of my mind: maybe Pasadena City attracted some of the prettiest girls in the state, all hoping to ride the queen’
s float on New Year’s Day. I thought that was pretty interesting. And my parents told me they were getting me an apartment in Pasadena. I hadn’t expected that. An apartment of my own would give me some space and independence. I was really excited.
During the summer of 1973 I went to work for my father at RPM International for the summer. It wasn’t exciting work, just a little bookkeeping. I wanted to take on some responsibility for myself and make some extra money. The summer did give me a glimpse into the workings of Tangerine Records, my father’s record label. I would also get a chance to see firsthand that his publishing company was flourishing. He was recording artists such as Ike and Tina Turner, the Ohio Players, Louis Jordan, and Percy Mayfield. It was a good experience for me to see the process from the inside.
I didn’t see very much of my father, just a fleeting glimpse and a conversation or two. I didn’t really want to have too many conversations with my father about the separation. It was a difficult time for him. It had been four years since Sid Feller departed, and without his old team of collaborators, his music was changing. He continued to make good music, but he hadn’t had a big hit for several years. He was working as hard as ever, but the money wasn’t coming in the way it had. He was still angry about his separation from my mother. Everything out of his mouth was “Your mother this, your mother that. She asked for the separation, I didn’t.” I was struggling not to get in between my parents because I loved them both, but my father wanted me to take his side.
My mother, however, wanted me to remain close to my father. She told me, “What is happening between your father and me is not your fault. Your father needs you, too.” I didn’t believe that at the time. I was upset with my father, and I blamed him for the collapse of the marriage. My mother was hard to live with, taking her anxiety and frustration out on me and my brothers. But I knew she was very unhappy, filled with a sense of failure about her marriage and frightened about the future. I worried about her health and what might happen to her. I was spending more time alone in my bedroom listening to music. I asked God to help me make sense of it all.
That fall I moved into my apartment in Pasadena. I loved the city immediately. Just to the north was Altadena, a treasure trove of beautiful African American girls. Pasadena moved at a slower pace than Los Angeles, and I liked that. There was still enough night life to enjoy myself on the weekends. The atmosphere was more laid-back, tranquil. My spirits rose as I began to shed the burdens of home and start focusing on my own life and my studies.
My cousin, Greg Shaw, would share my two-bedroom apartment. He had been living in Pasadena for a year, so he helped get me acclimated socially. Paul Hall, my friend and classmate from Westchester, would attend PCC that fall as well. During my first semester I was rehabbing my knee. My plans to play football came to an abrupt end when I reinjured my knee on the first day of spring practice. I did not know how severe my injury was yet, though. After hearing the opinions of several orthopedic surgeons, I decided to have surgery.
Southridge was a very private and sheltered environment for me, so it took some time to settle into my new life in Pasadena. I began to frequent parties, meet girls, and develop new relationships. My weekends became busier and busier. But I was focused on my classes and having fun. I was heady with the thrill of independence.
When I wasn’t partying on the weekends, I was “Porschen’ it.” That was my term for racing my Porsche in time trials around California. It was a great release. The thrill of going more than a hundred miles an hour on a professional racetrack was a rush. Some of my friends owned Porsches and other high-performance cars as well. We would rally up to Hearst Castle and the Monterey Peninsula. In the early hours of the morning, at two or three o’clock, when the roads were deserted, we would race through the canyons that led from Pacific Coast Highway to the 101 freeway. Those canyon roads twisted and turned, with two-hundred-foot drops, and we would take the curves at high speeds. It was dangerous, but we loved the freedom and the feeling of speed. I loved to drive my Porsche alone up Pacific Coast Highway at night, to Port Hueneme and back. The white foam of the waves would be glimmering in the dim light, and the roar of my Porsche engine was like a lullaby. Those drives gave me peace of mind.
It took a while to get adjusted and learn to manage my time. By the second semester I learned to play hard and study hard. Once I settled in, it became a must to focus on my studies. Believe it or not, I was attempting to double-major. I really loved architecture, but ultimately I chose business as my major, with economics as a minor. I thought in the future I would work for my father’s company, Ray Charles Enterprises. Once I made the decision, I was able to find a balance between school and sports-car rallying and parties.
That first year my mother watched me from afar. When I came home to visit, I would tell her stories of my new adventures. She saw me becoming caught up in my new sense of freedom. I was beginning to feel like a legend in my own mind. She told me, “Okay, Mr. Man, you’re the king of your own kingdom right now, the kingdom of Knuckle Dom. Watch the decisions you make and the people you choose to hang around. Be very careful, son.” She knew about my racing, and she felt that what I was doing was dangerous. “Slow down, or you’re going to have a rough road ahead.”
College had become the distraction I needed from the problems at home. That first year of college, I came home only for the holidays, although every now and then I would drop in during the week to check on my mother and make sure she was all right. She didn’t say much about what she was going through but it was clear to me that she was heartbroken and filled with regrets. There was nothing I could do to help her through it. I did not see my brothers very often, either. For two years I simply lost touch with David and Bobby at a time when they needed a big brother. All of our lives had changed and we were moving in a new direction. I knew they were still in sports. David became an all-American linebacker for Montclair Prep. But the tension at home separated us instead of uniting us. We all suffered individually in our own way. My life in the fast lane only covered up the confusion and pain that still lay underneath the façade. I was trying to survive emotionally. Though my life appeared to be an endless party that year, underneath I was headed for a collision with myself.
My second year at PCC I had detached myself emotionally. Nothing at home was going to change, and I wanted to get on with my life. I simply tried to stay focused on the future because the time was approaching when I would have to submit my applications to USC or Whittier College for the next year. I had great support from Roland Sink, my teacher for business math analysis and calculus. He became a mentor to me and some of my classmates. He constantly motivated us to excel, and excel we did. He was an alumnus of USC, and he wrote a letter of recommendation for me to attend USC for the fall semester.
After I chose my major, school became very intense. I was accepted to USC and to Whittier College as well. I spent my last semester at PCC preparing to transfer to either Whittier or USC. I was also preparing for surgery on my left knee. The scan revealed a torn main ligament and two torn cartilages. My surgery was to be performed by Dr. Clarence Shields of the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopedic Clinic. My father sought out one of the best orthopedic surgeons in sports medicine. It was major surgery. There was no arthroscopic surgery at that time, so it was extremely painful. It took six months to fully recover: two months in a cast and four months of rehab. My knee injury would end my quest to play professional baseball or football, but some of my friends and fellow athletes would go on to have successful careers in sports, including Rod Martin, Wendell Tyler, Wyatt Henderson, Ricky Odems, Jack Steptoe, Fred McNeill, and Sidney and Tryon Justin.
It was during that second year at PCC that I met the woman who was to become my wife. Chu and I invited a few friends over for a Halloween get-together, and my friend Dwayne arrived with an attractive woman dressed in a white racing outfit. We were introduced and I was immediately attracted to her. Her name was Duana Chenier and there seemed to be some chemistry between us, though
it would take some time for our relationship to develop. That was also the year that I met Rhonda Bailey, a Creole beauty in her own right, whom I was extremely attracted to as well. She would return to my life twenty years later and become the love interest of my life today. But at the time, I continued to stay focused, study hard, and have some fun, too.
I celebrated that summer with a big blowout party with some friends on Southridge. We invited all of our friends. It was a wonderful hallmark for me as I prepared to enter Whittier College. That July my family went to Montreal for the 1976 Summer Olympics. My friends Paul and Tommy Hall joined us there with their mother. We celebrated the victories of the Spinks brothers, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Bruce Jenner, who all won gold medals. Montreal and the Olympic Stadium were magnificent. It was a wonderful time for our families to be together and reconnect. It was great to be with my brothers, almost like the old days on Southridge. I loved my brothers very much, and Bobby had grown two or three inches. While we were together, I was filled with hope and optimism.
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