RAY CHARLES - THE BIRTH OF SOUL
Mike Evans (Omnibus Press, 2005)

This review appeared in Record Collector, October 2005.

Mike Evans was the saxophonist with the 60s band, Liverpool Scene, and I have known him for 40 years. Throughout that time, his hero has been Ray Charles and he has closely followed his career. Now after writing books on the Beatles and Elvis, he has written a biography of Ray Charles.

Ray Charles became blind in his childhood and instead of overcoming that handicap, he gave himself several additional ones as he advanced his career. He was a heroin addict, learning how to inject himself: he had numerous relationships with women and not believing in condoms, he fathered several illegitimate children: he gave several unwise interviews, notably one where he denounced rock’n’roll. It is a very dramatic story and Mike Evans tells it very well.

In 1978 Ray Charles wrote his autobiography, ‘Brother Ray’. It was a lurid book that made very frank reading, but it didn’t present a balanced view of his life and work. We got that in 1999 with ‘Ray Charles – Man And Music’ by Michael Lydon, which Evans admits was ‘meticulously researched’. In other words, what is there left for Evans to do, especially as his own book is shorter? Primary research is minimal – Evans has spoken to only 11 subjects while writing the book – so there are no significant revelations, but he does cover the final years of his life and he writes with insight about Charles’ influence on British R&B:

“The UK music scene in the very early Sixties was rigidly pigeon-holed, with jazz fans split between traditionalists and modernists, blues more likely to be considered as a branch of folk music, and rock’n’roll despised by both camps. The popularity of Ray Charles across the board did much to break down these barriers, and the band that embodied this process more than any other was Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated.”

It was not only the music scene that was pigeon-holed. Many purchasers of his country hits had no knowledge of the raucous R&B he had been recording for Atlantic. I shocked a friend’s mother, who loved ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’, by playing her ‘What’d I Say’ and she was mortified, telling me to take off this horrible black music.

As I was reading the book, I was enthralled by the chaos of Ray Charles’ private life as one affair followed another. On page 282, Mike Evans tells us that Ray fathered 12 children and with the help of the index, I resolved to find them. This turned out to be more complicated than a Sudoku as the index is not that accommodating and I only found eight:

Evelyn (born 1954) to a girlfriend, Louise Mitchell
Ray Charles Robinson Jr (born 1955) to his second wife Della
David Robinson (born 1958) to Della
Charles Wayne (born 1959) to Margie Hendricks of the Raelettes
Raenee (born 1961) to Mae Mosely, another Raelette who let Ray…
Robert (born 1961) to Della
Sheila (born 1963) to a neighbour Sandra Jean Betts, and
Vincent (born c.1968) to songwriter Arlette Kotchounian

If Mike Evans has left out four children, then that is a serious omission (or as he would write a serious ‘non-inclusion’). If they are in the text, then the index is at fault. It could be that I’ve missed them, but I have spent an hour trying to find them.

Two aspects relating to his children intrigue me. Firstly, do any of these children carry his musical genes? The book doesn’t tell me, but Rev. Robert Robinson presided at his funeral, and Ray Charles Jr was involved with the bio-pic with Jamie Foxx. With so many children, there must be some musical talent.

We are told that Raenee (what a revealing name) was born with glaucoma and that Ray paid the medical bills. Early on there is a reference to Ray Charles’ blindness being the result of congenital glaucoma. On the other hand, Ray’s blindness came after seeing his brother die in an accident when he was five. What exactly was the cause of his blindness? I would have welcomed some authoritative medical information. If it is congenital, surely more than one of his children would have this condition and surely one of his parents would have also been affected.

I am wary of books and TV programmes which attribute a major musical shift to one person. One of the programmes in the recent BBC series, ‘Soul Deep’, attributed the birth of soul music to Sam Cooke, but as great as Cooke was, popular music would have been exactly the same without him. A better case can be made for Ray Charles, but I still think that Mike Evans is overegging his pudding. He writes of ‘What’d I Say’:

“From the sensual reverb of the electric piano intro on Part I of the double-sided single, to the orgasmic exchanges with the Raelettes on Part II, the revelation, the pure impact – nothing had prepared anyone for this.”

To his credit, Mike Evans writes about all of Ray Charles’ music and he draws attention to little-known albums. I’ve always been intrigued by ‘Ray Charles Invites You To Listen’ where he sang in falsetto, and Evans says it marked him out as ‘an interpreter with few equals.’ However, if Ray Charles is as popular as he suggests, why have so few of his Sixties albums been reissued on CD?

I thought that many of Ray Charles’ Sixties albums were excellent but the public didn’t warm to them because the packaging was so naff. Was it because he was blind that he could be fobbed off with abominable sleeves – come to think of it, Stevie Wonder, George Shearing and Jose Feliciano had the same problem. The worst sleeves of all time include ‘Country And Western Meets Rhythm And Blues’ (1965), ‘Ray Charles Invites You To Listen’ (1967), ‘Through The Eyes Of Love’ (1972) and ‘Renaissance’ (1975). Evans says of the first one, ‘Corny or cool?’ A resounding ‘corny’, mate.

The book covers the film ‘Ray’ but the film, by ending where it does, ‘implies that whatever he did after that time – i.e.without the heroin – was hardly worthy of mention’ I disagree. The film showed what he was capable of doing despite the heroin, and the ending suggested the possibility of a sequel covering his later life.

‘The Birth Of Soul’ is always readable but there is carelessness. The fine duet of ‘Angel Eyes’ by Ray Charles and Willie Nelson with the guitarist Jackie King isn’t mentioned: even if Mike Evans doesn’t agree with my assessment, such a collaboration deserves to be mentioned. A quote of Ray’s about Charlie Pride is given twice with Pride’s Christian name spelt wrongly each time. This hasn’t been picked up while indexing, so wake up at the back there.

The last time I saw Mike Evans was in 2002 on the day his book, ‘Elvis: A Celebration’, had entered the Sunday Times’ best-selling list. Despite its faults, this book has been written with a lot of love and deserves to do well, although the timing is wrong. The film, ‘Ray’, has been and gone and keen fans will already have Michael Lydon’s book, which did have Ray Charles’ input.

Spencer Leigh