I first heard the music of Ray Charles in Grade 5. “Hit The Road Jack” playing from an old well-worn vinyl which was scratchy and tinny. My 5th Grade music teacher was obsessed with the Mr. Charles and subjected her students to his music almost daily. To most is was a near unbearable torture, to me it was heaven: Hit The Road Jack, Georgia, Unchain My Heart, and so on issued forth from the record player. When it came time to write a report on a musician, I naturally selected Ray Charles. Not only because I liked his music but because I was a brown noser and writing about Ray Charles would immediately increase my mark.
And it worked (I still possess the report for it bears an amazing 100% upon it). Still, after Grade 5, my love for with Ray Charles’ music has never truly gone away. Thus when I heard that Ray Charles had died at the age of 73 last month, I was quite shocked. I was even more shocked when I learned that Unsinn, who had been in Germany, had not heard the news as of yet. I would have thought that the death of a man such as Ray Charles would have been mourned around the world. I was wrong. Still, nothing prepared me for the anger I felt last Tuesday when I was the trailer for “Ray”, a movie about Ray Charles life. It felt to me as if the movie industry, the vultures that they are, had waited until Ray had died and then swooped down to make money from the man’s corpse … Still, another interpretation, of course, is that they are honouring the life of Ray Charles and hadn’t really expected him to die before the movie was released. I have no idea where I’m going with this. I’m done.
#1 by Garrek on July 26th, 2004 - 10:33 am
I like the music the man made and acknowldge his greatness, but in all honesty I doubt that they were waiting or hoping for his death. In fact to complete the movie, they may now have to reshoot the ending. anyway “Here’s to the great ones, there’s so few of them left”