July 13, 2021 • 38 mins
Ray Charles was hooked on heroin, arrested by federal agents, and once survived a near-death plane ride by helping the pilot - as a blind man. He invented R&B. He was powerful enough to bring black and white culture into one. He was a genre-melding musical genius. Despite being born into a literal dirt poor existence in the Jim Crow era Deep South, despite going completely blind by the age of seven, and despite his addiction, Ray Charles influenced everyone from the Beatles to Belushi. And he made some of the greatest music of all time.
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This episode was originally published on July 13, 2021.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about
Ray Charles are insane. He was arrested numerous times for heroin, marijuana,
(00:21):
drug paraphernalia, who once by federal agents. He avoided a
deadly plane crash by helping pilot a plane, and it's
worth noting that he was blind. He used his genius
to mix gospel with blues and invent the genre of
R and B. Then he melded that new style with
country in Western to become one of the biggest selling
black artists of his day, crossing over to enjoy mainstream
(00:43):
success by attracting a massive white audience. And Ray Charles
influenced everyone from the Beatles to Belushi by making some
of the greatest music of all time. And that music
I played for you at the top of the show
that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from
Mellotron called Minnie Cha Cha Cha MK one. I played
(01:05):
you that loop because I can't afford the rights to
off Wheederson Sweetheart by via Lon. And why would I
play you that specific slice of stink Floyd Cheese? Could
I afford it? Because that was the number one song
in America? On September third, nineteen fifty two, and that
was the deve Ray Charles signed to Atlantic Records, setting
(01:27):
the chorus for him to manifest the vision of himself
he'd had since he was a young boy, a young
blind boy, a vision of becoming one of the greatest
musicians of all time. On this episode busted for Heroin
and busting genre seeing into the Future in the Genius
of Ray Charles. I'm Jake Brennan. In this this Disgraceland,
(02:21):
Ray Charles was co piloting the small plane, a six
seat Cessna three ten. Ray Charles couldn't see anything, but
not because he was blind, because visibility from the snowstorm.
He his pilot and there one passenger, a diminutive rock journalist,
who were trying to land in was zero zero visibility.
(02:43):
No need to lose his cool. The plan was for
air traffic control to radio in landing instructions. Ray Charles
was his pilot's eyes. He communicated the radio instructions to
his pilot, who kept his gaze on the cockpit's instrument
landing system, listening to Ray intently focused on guiding the
plane safely into the Oklahoma City landing strip. Ray loved
(03:07):
this plane. It made his life a lot easier traveling
to his concerts. This way was much more efficient and
theoretically safer. But more than that, Ray Charles, a musician
by trade, a piano player, a songwriter, and a ranger
and bandleader, having his own plane, said to those who
cared to know that he'd made it despite being born
(03:31):
into a literal dirt poor existence in the Jim Crow
era Deep South, despite going completely blind by the age
of seven, despite his Heroin addiction, an addiction that led
to three arrests up until that point. Despite all of that,
Ray Charles had made it. First as a teenage fenom
(03:51):
doing his best not king cold impression, an act that
allowed him to make a living playing music at a
young age and endeared him to older, more seasoned musicians.
And then as a sideman duking it out in the
violent Chipman circuit backing up Lowell Fulson, And then as
a singles man signed to Atlantic Records, where his genius
was given full creator freedom to blossom. And finally, as
(04:14):
a highly compensated album artist of the first order signed
to a lucrative recording contract with ABC Records, a contract
that granted him an unprecedented royalty rate, as well as
ownership of his master recordings, and of course enough money
to buy his own plane. Ray Charles was a somebody
in a world of nobody's because that's exactly who his
(04:36):
mama told him he would be, and there was no
giving in to defeat. Didn't matter that he was blind,
didn't matter that he was born poor, didn't matter that
he was black. Those things were givens. There was nothing
he could do to change them. The only thing he
could change was his own future. How he saw himself,
where he saw himself, who he was, and that meant resilience.
(04:58):
That meant no excuse, no self pity. That meant showing up.
That meant not taking no for an answer. That meant
working hard and seizing whatever opportunity was put in front
of him. White audiences wanted a polite nat King Cole's
sounding impersonator, no problem. Ray Charles thought that was a genius,
his phrasing, his playing, his delivery. Ray would learn it
(05:21):
all and deliver Lowel Folsom needed a piano player, sure thing,
Ray Charles would not only give him that, he'd lead
his band too and learn the ways. This seasoned road
musicians while he was at it. Atlantic Records needed hits
to keep their fledgling independent label competitive. Not a problem.
Ray Charles would casually meld the gospel influence he was
raised on with the low down, dirty blues of the
(05:44):
Chitlin circuit and invent modern rhythm and blues in the process.
Oh and ABC Records needed ready to go bigger, wider
to earn out that massive recording contract they'd given him.
Ray had it figured out. He put all of his
previous experience together and lent his genius to genre melting
once again, again, mixing country and Western with sophisticated jazz
and pop on his landmark album Modern Sounds in Country
(06:06):
and Western sell a gazillion copies and crossover to a
mainstream white audience in a way that no black artist
had done prior, not even his hero Nat King Cole.
It was all part of the job, doing the damn
thing whatever it was, and not accepting his own limitations,
because those limitations were just that his own show Ray Charles,
(06:29):
where it was written that he couldn't do a thing
because he was blind, and he'd point you to nowhere.
He didn't need a cane. He had ears, in a
mind and two hands, and he could hear, learn and
feel his way through. And he didn't need a seeing
eye dog either. He wasn't going to become relying on
a fucking animal to lead him around. Ray Charles made
his way throughout whatever city he was in on his own,
(06:51):
onto whatever stage he was playing that night, through whatever
song he was playing on his piano, to the end
of the set, off of the stage, to the after part,
already into the bed of whatever good time gal was
hanging around. And just because he was blind, it didn't
mean he settled for women who were less attractive. Ray
Charles knew beautiful women when speaking with them, if they
(07:12):
gave him the indication they were interested, and most did,
such as his appeal as a musician and entertainer, He'd
run his hand over their wrists and arms, and once
the signals were received, he'd casually sensually feel about to
get a fuller picture, and the flirting would continue, and
eventually off to bed they'd go. Ray Charles was just
like any other musician, except that he wasn't. He was
(07:35):
Ray Charles, a genius. Ray Charles had arrived and at
the moment as the newly released modern sounds in country
and Western music was gloriously climbing the charts. Ray Charles's
dual engine Cessna airplane was making a horrifying descent sixteen
(07:56):
feet fifteen ten nine, six thousand feet five thousand and
four three two thousand feet one thousand feet. Finally, the
plane was just two hundred and fifty feet above the
ground and ready to land. But then air traffic control
told him to bring the plane back up for a bit.
They were at too low an altitude for their approach.
(08:17):
Nothing out of the ordinary happened all the time. Ray
relayed the message to his pilot, and the pilot pulled
back on the yoke, and suddenly the plane wouldn't ascend.
There was no more lift. Ice from the snowstorm had
frozen on and around the tiny plane and was weighing
it down. The plane would only go in one direction down. Okay,
(08:37):
it was bad, but not that bad. They'd simply circle
the airport, recalibrate their approach, and put the plane down safely.
And the pilot began circling, and that's when he looked
up from his cockpit's instrument panel and out of the
cockpit's front window. To get a layer of the land
before touching down, and what he saw was this nothing.
(08:58):
The plane's windshield was completely frozen over. The pilot had
forgotten to turn the windshield to frost on, and now
it was too late. But no amount of heat melt
this block of sheer ice on the windshield, and they
couldn't see anything. The plane couldn't ascend, and they were
going down fast and blind. Ray radioed into air traffic control.
They had zero visibility for landing. Air traffic Control told
(09:21):
them they were going to have to figure something out.
The pilot needed visibility for those final few feet to
prevent drifting upon descent, to prevent crashing, and the pilot
was nervous. Ray could hear it in his voice. The
rock journalists in the seat behind them started reciting Hail
Mary's and the pilot turned to his instrument panel to
make his final turn back toward the landing strip. He
(09:41):
couldn't see anything, just ice, no flight tower, no lights
on the strip, no nothing. Ray Charles was literally flying blind.
There was one certain outcome defeat death, a plane crash.
But then Ray Charles did what he'd done his whole life.
Unable to see, he visualized where he wanted to be
(10:03):
on the ground safe. He didn't accept his so called
predetermined outcome because blindness had given him something few others had,
true vision. Without sight, he literally could not see defeat.
Sites that distracted others, that pulled attention elsewhere did not exist,
and thus Ray Charles's imagination was given the freedom to
manifest powerful outcomes unimaginable to others. Comparatively, Ray Charles wasn't
(10:28):
blind compared to most, Ray Charles could see into the future,
and in that moment, with his plane fast approaching certain doom,
with his pilot's nerves betraying him, with his passenger in
the back spitting hail Mary's and pissing himself, Ray Charles
visualized a different outcome, a safe landing and lo and behold.
(10:49):
With less than one hundred feet above the ground, the
pilot saw something himself in the ice on the windshield,
a pinprick of light slowly expanding to the size of
a quarter to a half dollar. He leaned up put
his eye into the hole. With his hand still on
the controls and with Ray Charles by his side, the
pilot was able to use the vision the hole and
(11:09):
the ice gave him to see the landing strip and
bring the plane down safely. When they landed, the pilot collapsed.
Their rock journalists passenger was convinced an actual miracle had happened.
That as hail Mary's had paid off, air traffic control
workers came out of their tower down to the plane
to see for themselves what had happened. They couldn't believe
(11:31):
what they were witnessing, one tiny hole of which only
one eye could peer through, surrounded by solid ice, on
a plane completely frozen over. It was so improbable, this
tiny hole, this portal to salvation. But there it was
unexplainable except Ray. Charles didn't need an explanation. This was
nothing new for him, because though he was blind, he'd
(11:53):
been seeing the improbable his whole life. The teenage boys
(12:24):
on the city bus were staring at him, trying to
muzzle their excitement. It was coming up any minute now.
Of the two Harlem natives, one of them was a skeptic,
and a skepticism was about to make him pay. The
bet was a quarter to see if the blind dude
seated on the bus a couple rows down from them,
could do it. So they waited as the bus passed
(12:44):
block after New York City block on its way downtown,
and the boy who made the bet, the believer, knew
it was coming up next up. The bus chugged along
at its normal speed, keeping pace with the bustling traffic.
Any second now, both boys perched on the edge of
their seat, waiting, anticipating, alternately believing and unbelieving at the
(13:05):
same time. And there it was. The blind dude in
his seat reached up with his right hand pulled down
the bus stop lever, indicating this was his stop, and
the bus slowed itself over to the next stop, opened
its door and let the blind dude out, whereupon he
exited without a cane or a dog and made his
way to wherever it was he was going on assistance
(13:27):
pay up. The losing boy couldn't believe it. He forked
over his quarterer. How did the blind dude know? How
did he know which stop was his? The driver hadn't
called out any stops or streets. There was no pre
recorded message announcing the bus's progress blaring over a pa.
The bus just chugged along, had a good clip, and
the blind dude just knew where and when to make
(13:49):
The bus stop it was crazy, except that it really wasn't.
Ray Charles relied on his senses to get around. He
could feel the bend in the dip of the road
as the bus moved it told them where to get off.
He could sense it, just like he could sense that
I'm ed Erdgan, co founder and president of Atlantic Records,
knew what he was talking about. Ahmed had told Ray
(14:09):
that if he only saw pennies, well he'd see only pennies,
but if he saw dollars, he in fact would eventually
see dollars. Ray believed this in nineteen fifty two, at
the time Atlantic Record signed Ray Charles. This is what
qualified us straight talk in the music industry. So Ray
Charles considered himself lucky, and it went about doing his
(14:30):
and I'm at Erdigan's business, which at the time was
making hits. His first few singles failed to set the
world on fire. Ray was doing what he always did,
his version of Nat King Cole. He'd sometimes spice it
up with his version of Charles Brown. That approach worked
in the club, why wouldn't it work in the studio.
The answer was because the record buying public didn't want
(14:51):
another mat King Cole or Charles Brown. They wanted something new,
so Ray Charles hit the road. The road was tough,
violent Chitlin circuit, roadhouses and dance halls, shootings, stabbings, robberies,
all manner of vice and grift. If you weren't careful
(15:13):
on the road, you'd let you wind up off the
road and in a hospital, a jail or worse, the Morgue.
And beyond the Chitlin circuit, there were the occasional segregated
shows in the South. When Ray was simply a hired gun,
there was little he could do about it. But later
when he fronted his own bands, Ray Charles wouldn't stand
for him. At a headlining show on Augusta, Georgia, a
(15:35):
promoter wanted blacks upstairs in whites downstairs. Ray insisted he
was fine with segregation if his loyal black audience could
get the better downstairs seats, and the promoter refused. Ensued,
Ray paid two thousand dollars for breach of contract. A
line had been drawn, but later stands would break the
other way. What Ray could see was a vision of
(15:57):
integrated audiences in the South. For the most part. When
it came to negativity, the type of negativity that can
be debilitating for a performer. It was easy for Ray
Charles to block it out and concentrate on playing. He
literally could not see the problems posed by road life.
He could sense the danger, knew how to steer clear
(16:17):
of it. But because he was blind, he was immune
to the petty stock, the nasty bits that drive the insecurity,
the dirty looks in the attitude from the tough crowds,
even the jealousy from drunk competitive alphas in the audience
who worried about him stealing their dates. What was the
little blind dude behind the piano going to actually do anyway?
Sing their girls into the sack. That's exactly what happened.
(16:43):
The after parties were legend usually an apartment held by
the promoter where the band was allowed to shock up.
Sometimes a boarding house, maybe, depending on what city they
were in a hotel, but usually in an apartment where
all men are of debauchery went down. Was in the
john at the moment, getting down with what had become
his daily ritual, shooting heroin, and there was no real reason.
(17:08):
Just what musicians did back then, especially the jazz musicians.
Ray revered, but jazz didn't have a monopoly on the horse,
as Ray affectionately referred to him. Blues musicians indulged as well,
and Ray Charles developed a taste early, and he found
his way to the drug. While on the road with
lowell Fulson, band members were shooting up and Ray wanted
(17:28):
to know what the attraction was. Nobody pushed it on him.
Ray Charles went into Heroin clear eyed, knowing full well
the risk. He loved it. Heroin mellowed everything up, completely,
loosened him up. It was like Reefer, but a deeper,
heavier groove. Ray's ritual had him shooting up every day
to start his morning, and then every night after the gig.
(17:49):
Back in the early fifties, twenty year old reefers ran
Ray a five spot and for another five Ray could
had a bag of heroin to his weekly supply. Set
him up good. He score every week so or whenever
they rolled through one of the bigger cities. Right now,
at the after party in the John, Ray could hear
the party on the other side of the bathroom door
kicking up a notch. Someone in the band put Duke
(18:11):
Ellington's take the a train on the turntable was part joke,
part Q for the real train, the sex train, as
in quote unquote running train, one of the more popular
group sex tricks. Ray and his band would partake in
with whatever eager local gals were willing and able to
mix it up on whatever night they rolled through town.
Ray fingered through his toiletry's back for his works. He
(18:32):
wasn't missing out on anything. He was right where he
wanted to be. The train wasn't his thing anyway. Ray
liked group sex, but it had to be more than
a bunch of drunk bandmates stumbling around in an apartment
naked to the Duke. Ray wanted it to mean something
to all involved, to really feel it. Heroin helped him
really feel it, sex, music, whatever, and then it would
(18:54):
take it all away, literally and figuratively. Heroin was good
for a rating, whatever feelings, physical or mental or ailing. Ray.
Ray also knew that if he wasn't careful, Heroin would
take him away as well, land him in jail and
off stage for quite a long time. His first Heroin
bust was in nineteen fifty five, A little bit of
(19:17):
reefer and Heroin paraphernalia, A needle, a bird spoon. Miraculously
he got off. He see. He was busted again in
nineteen fifty eight in Philly. The cops burst in without
a warrant, found his stash, and collared him without a warrant,
though the CoP's case was thrown out a cord and
Ray avoided jail. Nothing, not his arrests, his drug addiction,
(19:37):
nor his blindness seemed could keep Ray Charles from doing
what his mother compelled him to do. To be Ray Charles,
he and I'm at Erican got down to business. Then
that King cole knock Os wouldn't do. Ray had to
dig deep, way down into his soul to find that
big scary thing inside of him that made him well him.
(20:00):
The prospect of revealing one's true self to the world
through art is to the artist terrifying, mainly because there
is a high probability that your art, which is now
quite literally you, will be rejected. Most artists only have
to deal with the prospect of the world rejecting their art,
the thing they made, their album or song or painting
or whatever. True artists, original artists, artists who take the
(20:23):
greatest risks, who don't imitate, who quite literally express themselves
into a wholly new and original subjective creation, have to
deal with the prospect of the world rejecting whatever it
is they created, but also with the world rejecting who
they are. Because true artists are their art. The risk
is massive, but so is the reward. Dollars not pennies.
(20:47):
Ahmed Ertigan knew this and repeated it over and over
again until Ray Charles knew it too, because the prospect
of expressing oneself honestly cannot only be terrifying but also stifling.
A'm ed Eritigain w one further and offered Ray Charles
some lyrics to get him through the creative block, to
provide just a touch of cover to better help him
reach down into himself and pull out something that was
(21:09):
uniquely him. Ahmet's lyrics were simple sexual double on tandra
the mess around. Ray Charles knew about sex. It was
just the spark he needed. He took a mets simple
lyrics and applied them to an old gospel tune he'd
known since his days back in Greensville, Florida as a boy.
(21:31):
The melody might have been spiritual, but the music was blues,
and the feel was something new, something that hadn't been
heard before, something totally unique. It wasn't just blues, and
it wasn't just rhythm. It was rhythm, and it was blues.
That familiar, beloved gospel melody set over, jumped up, boogie woogie,
The spiritual swapped for the secular, the hint of sex.
It was genius. It was Ray Charles. Mess Around was
(21:53):
a hit. Ray double down on his newfound combination of
gospel and blues with his song I've Got a Woman,
the melody directly nicked from the gospel tune It must
be Jesus. It went straight to number two. He followed
it up with this Little Girl of Mine, a fool
for You, drowned in my own tears Hallelujah, I Love
Her So all singles for Atlantic that traded on Ray's
(22:14):
patented mix of gospel and blues, all of which charted
and culminated in nineteen fifty nine with the release of
the single What I Say, which went to number six
on the Billboard chart into number one on the Our
Beach Chart. But more than that, it was a classic
in its own time, and by the end of the
nineteen fifties, the genius of Ray Charles was evident for
(22:36):
all to see. We'll be right back after this word
word word. McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts, nineteen sixty five. It
was once called the Asylum for the Insane, but sometime
(22:58):
back around the turn of the century they dropped that
name for something less literal, more inviting, so McLain Hospital
it was. Ray Charles was cold and just his hospital gown.
The room he was in was barren and freezing, not
to mention slightly terrifying. Sites didn't freak Ray Charles out,
but sounds. Sounds could be downright horrific. The shrieks of
(23:20):
terror coming from elsewhere in the hospital were so strong
he himself could taste the tube of rubber, the one
the orderly shoved in your mouth to make sure you
didn't bite your tongue off while they administered their electric
shock treatments. The sound of the electricity jewels, the shake
of the patient spasming on a metal chair, its feet
sharply digging into the linoleum floor was downright chilling, same
(23:42):
as the room he was in. On purpose, the hospital
is trying to freeze Ray Charles the junkie out, except
it wasn't working. For most junkies trying to wean off
of heroin. The cold helped speed withdrawls, but Ray Charles
wasn't having withdrawls. He'd been there, done that, There was
no weaning for him. He'd kicked cold turkey for the judge.
(24:06):
That judge was a real motherfucker, and Ray knew his
best chance at mercy was to kick Heroin before the
sentencing portion of his trial for his most recent bust,
the one in Boston. A couple months prior Logan Airfield,
Ray's plane landed without incident after a performance in Canada.
(24:29):
He and his bandmates exited and headed to the hotel.
The bite in the Boston air was nastier than Ray
was used to. He was looking forward to a hot
shower in the warm embrace of his fix, but when
he got to his room, he realized he left his
works on his plane. He had his assistant grab a
cab and the two headed back to Logan to his
plane to grab his heroin. Ray Charles did just that,
(24:52):
and then Ray Charles was grabbed by a pair of
federal agents drug squad. They had been watching the notorious
drugged out musician hit to his many previous arrests and
championing at the bit to bring him down. The headlines
alone would be worth it, and headlines there were. Ray
Charles busted again for heroin. Ray's profile at the time
(25:13):
was too damn big to keep his bust quiet. A
loud arrest meant a loud trial, and the loud trial
often meant a stiff sentence. Ray got hip quick. He
wasn't about to be made an example of. He wasn't
about to do real time to become a cautionary tale
something parents and music teachers tell their kids. Stay off
them drugs. You're gonna end up in jail, just like that,
(25:34):
Ray Charles. Fuck that. Ray hooked himself up with the
top notch attorney. Justice might have been blind like Ray Charles,
but she wasn't cheap like Ray Charles. Ray pooned up
the bread for the best attorney money could buy. Then
he doubled down and shelled out the cash for a
famous Vienna shrink, Frederic Hacker, the good Doctor, would play
(25:56):
nice in court with the judge. Ray checked himself into
the docks Beverly Hill's clinic and got down to the
business of getting clean. No weeding, just cold turkey. It
was violent, painful, immensely distressing, both physically and mentally, but
Ray pulled through. As always, he had an image, a
powerful image of himself in his head, future Ray, who
(26:18):
he will become. This visualization was nothing new. Visualization, or
manifestation as it's sometimes called, is a powerful tool that
has been used by many of the world's biggest celebrities,
who visualize their success, the things they don't have, and
then manifest them. Oprah Winfrey is a forceful advocate of visualization, or,
(26:43):
as she calls it, the secret, having famously employed the
tactic to land her career making role in Steven Spielberg's
film The Color Purple. Jim Carrey, when he was a
broke struggling actor, wrote himself a ten million dollar check
and kept it in his wallet, knowing that one day
he would cash. A decade later, he earned ten million
dollars to star and Dumb and Dumber. Lady Gaga has
(27:06):
long held a singular vision of herself. She reminds herself
of that vision every day and regularly repeats various affirmations
to help keep her on her path toward realizing that
vision of herself. And Will Smith is also a strong
believer in visualization, saying, quote, the universe is not a
thing that is going to push us around. That the
world and people and situations are not things that are
(27:28):
going to push us around. We are going to command
and demand that the universe become what we want it
to be. And for Will Smith, of course, that meant
becoming one of the biggest stars in the history of Hollywood.
For what it's worth, I too believe and have believed
in visualization. Going back to the months prior to launching
this podcast, I had a vision of what I wanted
(27:49):
it to become and still do, and that vision was
of course closely aligned with who I wanted to become
and now with who I am. I succeeded because I
believed and I believed because the evident for visualization is everywhere,
not only in the examples I just listed, but throughout history,
especially in this country in America. What men and women
have achieved the odds and circumstances they overcame, odds and
(28:12):
circumstances much more challenging than the ones I was facing.
At some point, as I got older and maybe a
little smarter, it became clear to me that in this
world anything is possible because the world is what we
make of it. Outside distractions people's opinions, their emotions, politics, whatever.
We have the power to ignore it, to block out
the noise, and to choose something else, to make something else.
(28:36):
But first we have to see it. Ray Charles saw
it right after he went blind. The vision of who
he was to become, and a blind, jailed junkie was
not what he saw a genre melding, musical genius powerful
enough to bring black and white culture into one. That's
how we saw himself, as big and talented and widely
(28:57):
loved by audiences of any color, as his hero in
that case, Cole was before him, as Frank Sinatra currently was.
This is who Ray Charles wanted to become. But to
do that he needed to kick heroin and impress that
damn judge and delaying a light sentence on him. So
that's what he did, kicked, powered through the withdrawals, committed
to the Shrinks program, and came out clean. They had
(29:22):
hauled him into McLean to test him to see if
he'd relapsed since the judge suspended his sentence, and if
he had, he'd be shipped off to prison. He of course,
hadn't relapsed. No amount of cold air pumped into his
barren hospital room is going to bring on heroin withdrawals
because there was no longer any heroin in his system.
He got off easy, five years probation, with the freedom
(29:43):
to travel and perform as a free man. Ray Charles
bounded his plane for the next gig. The plane was
(30:09):
making its descent. Every single passenger aboard knew they were
going to die. Everything was happening so fast, and they'd
just taken off from Boston some forty minutes ago. Things
got bad quick. If death has a taste, it was
in the mouth of everyone seated on a flight eleven
that morning, hail Mary's tears. Soon as the plane speeded
(30:31):
faster and faster toward its crash, screams, but then a
glimmer of hope. The plane jerked itself violently up just
to touch, and the passengers felt it for a moment calm.
They seemed to be cruising again. Maybe this wouldn't end
in destruction. But then another violent march, a gut pulling acceleration.
(30:53):
The field of the plane's nose dipped back down. It
was slight but definitive. They were blazing through the sky
again in an unimaginable sit be a death plunge if
the river was one. More screams, more prayers, more. I
want you all to know that America Day is offended
(31:19):
deed in prayer for the people who live lost here, I.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Gotta hear you, he rest of the world. Here, you
and the people who don't these feelings, people who don't
these feelings down, well, here's all.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Of the soup your home. Thank you for your heart work,
thank you for making a nation pound and may God
bless America, and make God bless America. America the beautiful
(32:07):
had been beat up. September eleventh, two thousand and one.
Was unlike anything Ray Charles and the rest of the
country had ever seen. It shook the country to its foundation.
Ray had seen rallying presidential speeches before he'd even met
his fair share of presidents. He'd performed at Richard Nixon's
White House, played at Ronald Reagan's inaugural and at the
(32:27):
nineteen eighty four Republican National Convention, and then at Bill
Clinton's inaugural too. He liked them all despite their flaws.
There were politicians, after all, and regardless of which party
they were in or what they promised, Ray Charles knew
that if he wanted something in this world. Relying on
a politician wasn't going to get him anywhere. He needed
to rely on himself. But this speech from George W.
(32:51):
Bush was different. There he was President of the United States,
standing in the rubble of the twin towers, his arm
around a fireman's, speaking through a bullhorn to assembled first responders, cops,
more firemen, EMTs, construction workers, all there doing the unthinkable
work of digging American bodies out from the pulverized remains
(33:11):
of cement, glass, plaster, office equipment, and everything else that
was once the World Trade Center. There was no teleprompter.
There was clearly no prepared, pre written speech. There was
just emotion, the best kind, uncalculated, real visceral. Somebody at
the back of the gathered crowd yelled to the President,
(33:32):
we can't hear you. George W. Bush improvises, I can
hear you. The rest of the world hears you. He
believed in what he was saying, and on that day,
just three days from the worst attack on American soil
since Pearl Harbor in nineteen forty one, the rest of
the country believed it too. It was one of those
rare moments of consensus in America. It wouldn't last. Within weeks,
(33:56):
America would begin siphoning itself off into familiar tribe. Never
wanted to let a good crisis go to waste. Republicans
would eventually use the situation to grandly and disingenuously reorganize
their United States as imperialist ambitions in the Middle East,
and Democrats would use the situation to consolidate obstruction for
Bush's entire agenda. Both sides succeeded to varying degrees, and
(34:21):
both sides also failed fantastically, you know, like they always do.
But on that day, with the president down there, with
the people down in the rubble, bullhorn in his hand,
shouting from the heart like an impassioned Southern preacher, Ray
Charles saw hope, and he also saw himself as someone
who could remind America of its beauty. By two thousand
(34:43):
and one, Ray Charles was somewhat of an American institution.
After Kicking Dope, he had rebounded with a number one
hit on the R and B charts, the ironically titled
Let's Go Get Stoned. But over the decades, in a
discography now over fifty records long, his three number one
hit hits and his two gold records barely scratched the
surface of his influence on the music industry in pop
(35:05):
culture in general, from Cola commercials to Blues Brothers cameos
to current Hollywood talk of a biopic of his life.
Ray Charles had become part of the fabric of Americana.
So naturally, when America was hurting, Ray Charles wanted to
help rally the country. Like the President, Ray Charles knew
(35:25):
about hope. He also knew about grit and resilience. Ray
Charles was a symbol of resilience, a symbol of what
you can become no matter where you come from, no
matter how far down you are. And America at the
moment was down. But Ray Charles, the blind kid from
the Jim Crow South, who'd never seen himself as anything
but capable and the equal, was about to remind America
(35:48):
of its beauty. October twenty eighth, two thousand and one,
Game two of the World Series, a series which was
delayed because of the al Qaeda attack on the World
Trade Center, the hometown Diamondbacks were up a game against
the vaunted New York Yankees, who'd won the previous three
World series titles. The pregame Ceremony Packed House, America on Edge,
(36:11):
America on the.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Brink, Ladies and gentlemen, to honor America Araa with the
singing of Amratha the Beautiful, Please well go the man
and his soul, Mister Ray Will.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Charles America the Beautiful for a couple minutes there. In
two thousand and one, the genius of Ray Charles had
reimagined the Catherine Lee Bates song into a newfound national anthem.
The emotion in the performance is chilling, hair raising, with
nearly fifty thousand in attendance and sixteen million watching at home,
(36:53):
all keyed in to the same emotion. Hope, white, black, left, right, red, blue,
Republican Democrat. None of it matters. There is a fusion
that happens racing the song, a mass melding of oneness
of optimism. Just weeks after a near death blow in Arizona.
It's a phoenix rising, a reminder of our collective resilience,
(37:16):
a reminder to never lose sight of not only who
we are, but perhaps more important, of who we can become.
A reminder from a true visionary, a blind visionary. It's
Ray Charles Embody and Spirit in Soul Genius. I'm Jake
(37:38):
Brennan and this this Disgraceland from Disgraceland was created by
(38:01):
Yours Truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.
Credits for this episode can be found on the show
notes page at disgracelampod dot com. If you're listening as
a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show.
We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become
a member right now by going to disgracelampod dot com
Slash Membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland
(38:25):
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(38:45):
and on YouTube at YouTube dot com slash at disgracelampod
Rock a Roller. He then
Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about
Ray Charles are insane. He was arrested numerous times for heroin, marijuana,
(00:21):
drug paraphernalia, who once by federal agents. He avoided a
deadly plane crash by helping pilot a plane, and it's
worth noting that he was blind. He used his genius
to mix gospel with blues and invent the genre of
R and B. Then he melded that new style with
country in Western to become one of the biggest selling
black artists of his day, crossing over to enjoy mainstream
(00:43):
success by attracting a massive white audience. And Ray Charles
influenced everyone from the Beatles to Belushi by making some
of the greatest music of all time. And that music
I played for you at the top of the show
that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from
Mellotron called Minnie Cha Cha Cha MK one. I played
(01:05):
you that loop because I can't afford the rights to
off Wheederson Sweetheart by via Lon. And why would I
play you that specific slice of stink Floyd Cheese? Could
I afford it? Because that was the number one song
in America? On September third, nineteen fifty two, and that
was the deve Ray Charles signed to Atlantic Records, setting
(01:27):
the chorus for him to manifest the vision of himself
he'd had since he was a young boy, a young
blind boy, a vision of becoming one of the greatest
musicians of all time. On this episode busted for Heroin
and busting genre seeing into the Future in the Genius
of Ray Charles. I'm Jake Brennan. In this this Disgraceland,
(02:21):
Ray Charles was co piloting the small plane, a six
seat Cessna three ten. Ray Charles couldn't see anything, but
not because he was blind, because visibility from the snowstorm.
He his pilot and there one passenger, a diminutive rock journalist,
who were trying to land in was zero zero visibility.
(02:43):
No need to lose his cool. The plan was for
air traffic control to radio in landing instructions. Ray Charles
was his pilot's eyes. He communicated the radio instructions to
his pilot, who kept his gaze on the cockpit's instrument
landing system, listening to Ray intently focused on guiding the
plane safely into the Oklahoma City landing strip. Ray loved
(03:07):
this plane. It made his life a lot easier traveling
to his concerts. This way was much more efficient and
theoretically safer. But more than that, Ray Charles, a musician
by trade, a piano player, a songwriter, and a ranger
and bandleader, having his own plane, said to those who
cared to know that he'd made it despite being born
(03:31):
into a literal dirt poor existence in the Jim Crow
era Deep South, despite going completely blind by the age
of seven, despite his Heroin addiction, an addiction that led
to three arrests up until that point. Despite all of that,
Ray Charles had made it. First as a teenage fenom
(03:51):
doing his best not king cold impression, an act that
allowed him to make a living playing music at a
young age and endeared him to older, more seasoned musicians.
And then as a sideman duking it out in the
violent Chipman circuit backing up Lowell Fulson, And then as
a singles man signed to Atlantic Records, where his genius
was given full creator freedom to blossom. And finally, as
(04:14):
a highly compensated album artist of the first order signed
to a lucrative recording contract with ABC Records, a contract
that granted him an unprecedented royalty rate, as well as
ownership of his master recordings, and of course enough money
to buy his own plane. Ray Charles was a somebody
in a world of nobody's because that's exactly who his
(04:36):
mama told him he would be, and there was no
giving in to defeat. Didn't matter that he was blind,
didn't matter that he was born poor, didn't matter that
he was black. Those things were givens. There was nothing
he could do to change them. The only thing he
could change was his own future. How he saw himself,
where he saw himself, who he was, and that meant resilience.
(04:58):
That meant no excuse, no self pity. That meant showing up.
That meant not taking no for an answer. That meant
working hard and seizing whatever opportunity was put in front
of him. White audiences wanted a polite nat King Cole's
sounding impersonator, no problem. Ray Charles thought that was a genius,
his phrasing, his playing, his delivery. Ray would learn it
(05:21):
all and deliver Lowel Folsom needed a piano player, sure thing,
Ray Charles would not only give him that, he'd lead
his band too and learn the ways. This seasoned road
musicians while he was at it. Atlantic Records needed hits
to keep their fledgling independent label competitive. Not a problem.
Ray Charles would casually meld the gospel influence he was
raised on with the low down, dirty blues of the
(05:44):
Chitlin circuit and invent modern rhythm and blues in the process.
Oh and ABC Records needed ready to go bigger, wider
to earn out that massive recording contract they'd given him.
Ray had it figured out. He put all of his
previous experience together and lent his genius to genre melting
once again, again, mixing country and Western with sophisticated jazz
and pop on his landmark album Modern Sounds in Country
(06:06):
and Western sell a gazillion copies and crossover to a
mainstream white audience in a way that no black artist
had done prior, not even his hero Nat King Cole.
It was all part of the job, doing the damn
thing whatever it was, and not accepting his own limitations,
because those limitations were just that his own show Ray Charles,
(06:29):
where it was written that he couldn't do a thing
because he was blind, and he'd point you to nowhere.
He didn't need a cane. He had ears, in a
mind and two hands, and he could hear, learn and
feel his way through. And he didn't need a seeing
eye dog either. He wasn't going to become relying on
a fucking animal to lead him around. Ray Charles made
his way throughout whatever city he was in on his own,
(06:51):
onto whatever stage he was playing that night, through whatever
song he was playing on his piano, to the end
of the set, off of the stage, to the after part,
already into the bed of whatever good time gal was
hanging around. And just because he was blind, it didn't
mean he settled for women who were less attractive. Ray
Charles knew beautiful women when speaking with them, if they
(07:12):
gave him the indication they were interested, and most did,
such as his appeal as a musician and entertainer, He'd
run his hand over their wrists and arms, and once
the signals were received, he'd casually sensually feel about to
get a fuller picture, and the flirting would continue, and
eventually off to bed they'd go. Ray Charles was just
like any other musician, except that he wasn't. He was
(07:35):
Ray Charles, a genius. Ray Charles had arrived and at
the moment as the newly released modern sounds in country
and Western music was gloriously climbing the charts. Ray Charles's
dual engine Cessna airplane was making a horrifying descent sixteen
(07:56):
feet fifteen ten nine, six thousand feet five thousand and
four three two thousand feet one thousand feet. Finally, the
plane was just two hundred and fifty feet above the
ground and ready to land. But then air traffic control
told him to bring the plane back up for a bit.
They were at too low an altitude for their approach.
(08:17):
Nothing out of the ordinary happened all the time. Ray
relayed the message to his pilot, and the pilot pulled
back on the yoke, and suddenly the plane wouldn't ascend.
There was no more lift. Ice from the snowstorm had
frozen on and around the tiny plane and was weighing
it down. The plane would only go in one direction down. Okay,
(08:37):
it was bad, but not that bad. They'd simply circle
the airport, recalibrate their approach, and put the plane down safely.
And the pilot began circling, and that's when he looked
up from his cockpit's instrument panel and out of the
cockpit's front window. To get a layer of the land
before touching down, and what he saw was this nothing.
(08:58):
The plane's windshield was completely frozen over. The pilot had
forgotten to turn the windshield to frost on, and now
it was too late. But no amount of heat melt
this block of sheer ice on the windshield, and they
couldn't see anything. The plane couldn't ascend, and they were
going down fast and blind. Ray radioed into air traffic control.
They had zero visibility for landing. Air traffic Control told
(09:21):
them they were going to have to figure something out.
The pilot needed visibility for those final few feet to
prevent drifting upon descent, to prevent crashing, and the pilot
was nervous. Ray could hear it in his voice. The
rock journalists in the seat behind them started reciting Hail
Mary's and the pilot turned to his instrument panel to
make his final turn back toward the landing strip. He
(09:41):
couldn't see anything, just ice, no flight tower, no lights
on the strip, no nothing. Ray Charles was literally flying blind.
There was one certain outcome defeat death, a plane crash.
But then Ray Charles did what he'd done his whole life.
Unable to see, he visualized where he wanted to be
(10:03):
on the ground safe. He didn't accept his so called
predetermined outcome because blindness had given him something few others had,
true vision. Without sight, he literally could not see defeat.
Sites that distracted others, that pulled attention elsewhere did not exist,
and thus Ray Charles's imagination was given the freedom to
manifest powerful outcomes unimaginable to others. Comparatively, Ray Charles wasn't
(10:28):
blind compared to most, Ray Charles could see into the future,
and in that moment, with his plane fast approaching certain doom,
with his pilot's nerves betraying him, with his passenger in
the back spitting hail Mary's and pissing himself, Ray Charles
visualized a different outcome, a safe landing and lo and behold.
(10:49):
With less than one hundred feet above the ground, the
pilot saw something himself in the ice on the windshield,
a pinprick of light slowly expanding to the size of
a quarter to a half dollar. He leaned up put
his eye into the hole. With his hand still on
the controls and with Ray Charles by his side, the
pilot was able to use the vision the hole and
(11:09):
the ice gave him to see the landing strip and
bring the plane down safely. When they landed, the pilot collapsed.
Their rock journalists passenger was convinced an actual miracle had happened.
That as hail Mary's had paid off, air traffic control
workers came out of their tower down to the plane
to see for themselves what had happened. They couldn't believe
(11:31):
what they were witnessing, one tiny hole of which only
one eye could peer through, surrounded by solid ice, on
a plane completely frozen over. It was so improbable, this
tiny hole, this portal to salvation. But there it was
unexplainable except Ray. Charles didn't need an explanation. This was
nothing new for him, because though he was blind, he'd
(11:53):
been seeing the improbable his whole life. The teenage boys
(12:24):
on the city bus were staring at him, trying to
muzzle their excitement. It was coming up any minute now.
Of the two Harlem natives, one of them was a skeptic,
and a skepticism was about to make him pay. The
bet was a quarter to see if the blind dude
seated on the bus a couple rows down from them,
could do it. So they waited as the bus passed
(12:44):
block after New York City block on its way downtown,
and the boy who made the bet, the believer, knew
it was coming up next up. The bus chugged along
at its normal speed, keeping pace with the bustling traffic.
Any second now, both boys perched on the edge of
their seat, waiting, anticipating, alternately believing and unbelieving at the
(13:05):
same time. And there it was. The blind dude in
his seat reached up with his right hand pulled down
the bus stop lever, indicating this was his stop, and
the bus slowed itself over to the next stop, opened
its door and let the blind dude out, whereupon he
exited without a cane or a dog and made his
way to wherever it was he was going on assistance
(13:27):
pay up. The losing boy couldn't believe it. He forked
over his quarterer. How did the blind dude know? How
did he know which stop was his? The driver hadn't
called out any stops or streets. There was no pre
recorded message announcing the bus's progress blaring over a pa.
The bus just chugged along, had a good clip, and
the blind dude just knew where and when to make
(13:49):
The bus stop it was crazy, except that it really wasn't.
Ray Charles relied on his senses to get around. He
could feel the bend in the dip of the road
as the bus moved it told them where to get off.
He could sense it, just like he could sense that
I'm ed Erdgan, co founder and president of Atlantic Records,
knew what he was talking about. Ahmed had told Ray
(14:09):
that if he only saw pennies, well he'd see only pennies,
but if he saw dollars, he in fact would eventually
see dollars. Ray believed this in nineteen fifty two, at
the time Atlantic Record signed Ray Charles. This is what
qualified us straight talk in the music industry. So Ray
Charles considered himself lucky, and it went about doing his
(14:30):
and I'm at Erdigan's business, which at the time was
making hits. His first few singles failed to set the
world on fire. Ray was doing what he always did,
his version of Nat King Cole. He'd sometimes spice it
up with his version of Charles Brown. That approach worked
in the club, why wouldn't it work in the studio.
The answer was because the record buying public didn't want
(14:51):
another mat King Cole or Charles Brown. They wanted something new,
so Ray Charles hit the road. The road was tough,
violent Chitlin circuit, roadhouses and dance halls, shootings, stabbings, robberies,
all manner of vice and grift. If you weren't careful
(15:13):
on the road, you'd let you wind up off the
road and in a hospital, a jail or worse, the Morgue.
And beyond the Chitlin circuit, there were the occasional segregated
shows in the South. When Ray was simply a hired gun,
there was little he could do about it. But later
when he fronted his own bands, Ray Charles wouldn't stand
for him. At a headlining show on Augusta, Georgia, a
(15:35):
promoter wanted blacks upstairs in whites downstairs. Ray insisted he
was fine with segregation if his loyal black audience could
get the better downstairs seats, and the promoter refused. Ensued,
Ray paid two thousand dollars for breach of contract. A
line had been drawn, but later stands would break the
other way. What Ray could see was a vision of
(15:57):
integrated audiences in the South. For the most part. When
it came to negativity, the type of negativity that can
be debilitating for a performer. It was easy for Ray
Charles to block it out and concentrate on playing. He
literally could not see the problems posed by road life.
He could sense the danger, knew how to steer clear
(16:17):
of it. But because he was blind, he was immune
to the petty stock, the nasty bits that drive the insecurity,
the dirty looks in the attitude from the tough crowds,
even the jealousy from drunk competitive alphas in the audience
who worried about him stealing their dates. What was the
little blind dude behind the piano going to actually do anyway?
Sing their girls into the sack. That's exactly what happened.
(16:43):
The after parties were legend usually an apartment held by
the promoter where the band was allowed to shock up.
Sometimes a boarding house, maybe, depending on what city they
were in a hotel, but usually in an apartment where
all men are of debauchery went down. Was in the
john at the moment, getting down with what had become
his daily ritual, shooting heroin, and there was no real reason.
(17:08):
Just what musicians did back then, especially the jazz musicians.
Ray revered, but jazz didn't have a monopoly on the horse,
as Ray affectionately referred to him. Blues musicians indulged as well,
and Ray Charles developed a taste early, and he found
his way to the drug. While on the road with
lowell Fulson, band members were shooting up and Ray wanted
(17:28):
to know what the attraction was. Nobody pushed it on him.
Ray Charles went into Heroin clear eyed, knowing full well
the risk. He loved it. Heroin mellowed everything up, completely,
loosened him up. It was like Reefer, but a deeper,
heavier groove. Ray's ritual had him shooting up every day
to start his morning, and then every night after the gig.
(17:49):
Back in the early fifties, twenty year old reefers ran
Ray a five spot and for another five Ray could
had a bag of heroin to his weekly supply. Set
him up good. He score every week so or whenever
they rolled through one of the bigger cities. Right now,
at the after party in the John, Ray could hear
the party on the other side of the bathroom door
kicking up a notch. Someone in the band put Duke
(18:11):
Ellington's take the a train on the turntable was part joke,
part Q for the real train, the sex train, as
in quote unquote running train, one of the more popular
group sex tricks. Ray and his band would partake in
with whatever eager local gals were willing and able to
mix it up on whatever night they rolled through town.
Ray fingered through his toiletry's back for his works. He
(18:32):
wasn't missing out on anything. He was right where he
wanted to be. The train wasn't his thing anyway. Ray
liked group sex, but it had to be more than
a bunch of drunk bandmates stumbling around in an apartment
naked to the Duke. Ray wanted it to mean something
to all involved, to really feel it. Heroin helped him
really feel it, sex, music, whatever, and then it would
(18:54):
take it all away, literally and figuratively. Heroin was good
for a rating, whatever feelings, physical or mental or ailing. Ray.
Ray also knew that if he wasn't careful, Heroin would
take him away as well, land him in jail and
off stage for quite a long time. His first Heroin
bust was in nineteen fifty five, A little bit of
(19:17):
reefer and Heroin paraphernalia, A needle, a bird spoon. Miraculously
he got off. He see. He was busted again in
nineteen fifty eight in Philly. The cops burst in without
a warrant, found his stash, and collared him without a warrant,
though the CoP's case was thrown out a cord and
Ray avoided jail. Nothing, not his arrests, his drug addiction,
(19:37):
nor his blindness seemed could keep Ray Charles from doing
what his mother compelled him to do. To be Ray Charles,
he and I'm at Erican got down to business. Then
that King cole knock Os wouldn't do. Ray had to
dig deep, way down into his soul to find that
big scary thing inside of him that made him well him.
(20:00):
The prospect of revealing one's true self to the world
through art is to the artist terrifying, mainly because there
is a high probability that your art, which is now
quite literally you, will be rejected. Most artists only have
to deal with the prospect of the world rejecting their art,
the thing they made, their album or song or painting
or whatever. True artists, original artists, artists who take the
(20:23):
greatest risks, who don't imitate, who quite literally express themselves
into a wholly new and original subjective creation, have to
deal with the prospect of the world rejecting whatever it
is they created, but also with the world rejecting who
they are. Because true artists are their art. The risk
is massive, but so is the reward. Dollars not pennies.
(20:47):
Ahmed Ertigan knew this and repeated it over and over
again until Ray Charles knew it too, because the prospect
of expressing oneself honestly cannot only be terrifying but also stifling.
A'm ed Eritigain w one further and offered Ray Charles
some lyrics to get him through the creative block, to
provide just a touch of cover to better help him
reach down into himself and pull out something that was
(21:09):
uniquely him. Ahmet's lyrics were simple sexual double on tandra
the mess around. Ray Charles knew about sex. It was
just the spark he needed. He took a mets simple
lyrics and applied them to an old gospel tune he'd
known since his days back in Greensville, Florida as a boy.
(21:31):
The melody might have been spiritual, but the music was blues,
and the feel was something new, something that hadn't been
heard before, something totally unique. It wasn't just blues, and
it wasn't just rhythm. It was rhythm, and it was blues.
That familiar, beloved gospel melody set over, jumped up, boogie woogie,
The spiritual swapped for the secular, the hint of sex.
It was genius. It was Ray Charles. Mess Around was
(21:53):
a hit. Ray double down on his newfound combination of
gospel and blues with his song I've Got a Woman,
the melody directly nicked from the gospel tune It must
be Jesus. It went straight to number two. He followed
it up with this Little Girl of Mine, a fool
for You, drowned in my own tears Hallelujah, I Love
Her So all singles for Atlantic that traded on Ray's
(22:14):
patented mix of gospel and blues, all of which charted
and culminated in nineteen fifty nine with the release of
the single What I Say, which went to number six
on the Billboard chart into number one on the Our
Beach Chart. But more than that, it was a classic
in its own time, and by the end of the
nineteen fifties, the genius of Ray Charles was evident for
(22:36):
all to see. We'll be right back after this word
word word. McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts, nineteen sixty five. It
was once called the Asylum for the Insane, but sometime
(22:58):
back around the turn of the century they dropped that
name for something less literal, more inviting, so McLain Hospital
it was. Ray Charles was cold and just his hospital gown.
The room he was in was barren and freezing, not
to mention slightly terrifying. Sites didn't freak Ray Charles out,
but sounds. Sounds could be downright horrific. The shrieks of
(23:20):
terror coming from elsewhere in the hospital were so strong
he himself could taste the tube of rubber, the one
the orderly shoved in your mouth to make sure you
didn't bite your tongue off while they administered their electric
shock treatments. The sound of the electricity jewels, the shake
of the patient spasming on a metal chair, its feet
sharply digging into the linoleum floor was downright chilling, same
(23:42):
as the room he was in. On purpose, the hospital
is trying to freeze Ray Charles the junkie out, except
it wasn't working. For most junkies trying to wean off
of heroin. The cold helped speed withdrawls, but Ray Charles
wasn't having withdrawls. He'd been there, done that, There was
no weaning for him. He'd kicked cold turkey for the judge.
(24:06):
That judge was a real motherfucker, and Ray knew his
best chance at mercy was to kick Heroin before the
sentencing portion of his trial for his most recent bust,
the one in Boston. A couple months prior Logan Airfield,
Ray's plane landed without incident after a performance in Canada.
(24:29):
He and his bandmates exited and headed to the hotel.
The bite in the Boston air was nastier than Ray
was used to. He was looking forward to a hot
shower in the warm embrace of his fix, but when
he got to his room, he realized he left his
works on his plane. He had his assistant grab a
cab and the two headed back to Logan to his
plane to grab his heroin. Ray Charles did just that,
(24:52):
and then Ray Charles was grabbed by a pair of
federal agents drug squad. They had been watching the notorious
drugged out musician hit to his many previous arrests and
championing at the bit to bring him down. The headlines
alone would be worth it, and headlines there were. Ray
Charles busted again for heroin. Ray's profile at the time
(25:13):
was too damn big to keep his bust quiet. A
loud arrest meant a loud trial, and the loud trial
often meant a stiff sentence. Ray got hip quick. He
wasn't about to be made an example of. He wasn't
about to do real time to become a cautionary tale
something parents and music teachers tell their kids. Stay off
them drugs. You're gonna end up in jail, just like that,
(25:34):
Ray Charles. Fuck that. Ray hooked himself up with the
top notch attorney. Justice might have been blind like Ray Charles,
but she wasn't cheap like Ray Charles. Ray pooned up
the bread for the best attorney money could buy. Then
he doubled down and shelled out the cash for a
famous Vienna shrink, Frederic Hacker, the good Doctor, would play
(25:56):
nice in court with the judge. Ray checked himself into
the docks Beverly Hill's clinic and got down to the
business of getting clean. No weeding, just cold turkey. It
was violent, painful, immensely distressing, both physically and mentally, but
Ray pulled through. As always, he had an image, a
powerful image of himself in his head, future Ray, who
(26:18):
he will become. This visualization was nothing new. Visualization, or
manifestation as it's sometimes called, is a powerful tool that
has been used by many of the world's biggest celebrities,
who visualize their success, the things they don't have, and
then manifest them. Oprah Winfrey is a forceful advocate of visualization, or,
(26:43):
as she calls it, the secret, having famously employed the
tactic to land her career making role in Steven Spielberg's
film The Color Purple. Jim Carrey, when he was a
broke struggling actor, wrote himself a ten million dollar check
and kept it in his wallet, knowing that one day
he would cash. A decade later, he earned ten million
dollars to star and Dumb and Dumber. Lady Gaga has
(27:06):
long held a singular vision of herself. She reminds herself
of that vision every day and regularly repeats various affirmations
to help keep her on her path toward realizing that
vision of herself. And Will Smith is also a strong
believer in visualization, saying, quote, the universe is not a
thing that is going to push us around. That the
world and people and situations are not things that are
(27:28):
going to push us around. We are going to command
and demand that the universe become what we want it
to be. And for Will Smith, of course, that meant
becoming one of the biggest stars in the history of Hollywood.
For what it's worth, I too believe and have believed
in visualization. Going back to the months prior to launching
this podcast, I had a vision of what I wanted
(27:49):
it to become and still do, and that vision was
of course closely aligned with who I wanted to become
and now with who I am. I succeeded because I
believed and I believed because the evident for visualization is everywhere,
not only in the examples I just listed, but throughout history,
especially in this country in America. What men and women
have achieved the odds and circumstances they overcame, odds and
(28:12):
circumstances much more challenging than the ones I was facing.
At some point, as I got older and maybe a
little smarter, it became clear to me that in this
world anything is possible because the world is what we
make of it. Outside distractions people's opinions, their emotions, politics, whatever.
We have the power to ignore it, to block out
the noise, and to choose something else, to make something else.
(28:36):
But first we have to see it. Ray Charles saw
it right after he went blind. The vision of who
he was to become, and a blind, jailed junkie was
not what he saw a genre melding, musical genius powerful
enough to bring black and white culture into one. That's
how we saw himself, as big and talented and widely
(28:57):
loved by audiences of any color, as his hero in
that case, Cole was before him, as Frank Sinatra currently was.
This is who Ray Charles wanted to become. But to
do that he needed to kick heroin and impress that
damn judge and delaying a light sentence on him. So
that's what he did, kicked, powered through the withdrawals, committed
to the Shrinks program, and came out clean. They had
(29:22):
hauled him into McLean to test him to see if
he'd relapsed since the judge suspended his sentence, and if
he had, he'd be shipped off to prison. He of course,
hadn't relapsed. No amount of cold air pumped into his
barren hospital room is going to bring on heroin withdrawals
because there was no longer any heroin in his system.
He got off easy, five years probation, with the freedom
(29:43):
to travel and perform as a free man. Ray Charles
bounded his plane for the next gig. The plane was
(30:09):
making its descent. Every single passenger aboard knew they were
going to die. Everything was happening so fast, and they'd
just taken off from Boston some forty minutes ago. Things
got bad quick. If death has a taste, it was
in the mouth of everyone seated on a flight eleven
that morning, hail Mary's tears. Soon as the plane speeded
(30:31):
faster and faster toward its crash, screams, but then a
glimmer of hope. The plane jerked itself violently up just
to touch, and the passengers felt it for a moment calm.
They seemed to be cruising again. Maybe this wouldn't end
in destruction. But then another violent march, a gut pulling acceleration.
(30:53):
The field of the plane's nose dipped back down. It
was slight but definitive. They were blazing through the sky
again in an unimaginable sit be a death plunge if
the river was one. More screams, more prayers, more. I
want you all to know that America Day is offended
(31:19):
deed in prayer for the people who live lost here, I.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Gotta hear you, he rest of the world. Here, you
and the people who don't these feelings, people who don't
these feelings down, well, here's all.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Of the soup your home. Thank you for your heart work,
thank you for making a nation pound and may God
bless America, and make God bless America. America the beautiful
(32:07):
had been beat up. September eleventh, two thousand and one.
Was unlike anything Ray Charles and the rest of the
country had ever seen. It shook the country to its foundation.
Ray had seen rallying presidential speeches before he'd even met
his fair share of presidents. He'd performed at Richard Nixon's
White House, played at Ronald Reagan's inaugural and at the
(32:27):
nineteen eighty four Republican National Convention, and then at Bill
Clinton's inaugural too. He liked them all despite their flaws.
There were politicians, after all, and regardless of which party
they were in or what they promised, Ray Charles knew
that if he wanted something in this world. Relying on
a politician wasn't going to get him anywhere. He needed
to rely on himself. But this speech from George W.
(32:51):
Bush was different. There he was President of the United States,
standing in the rubble of the twin towers, his arm
around a fireman's, speaking through a bullhorn to assembled first responders, cops,
more firemen, EMTs, construction workers, all there doing the unthinkable
work of digging American bodies out from the pulverized remains
(33:11):
of cement, glass, plaster, office equipment, and everything else that
was once the World Trade Center. There was no teleprompter.
There was clearly no prepared, pre written speech. There was
just emotion, the best kind, uncalculated, real visceral. Somebody at
the back of the gathered crowd yelled to the President,
(33:32):
we can't hear you. George W. Bush improvises, I can
hear you. The rest of the world hears you. He
believed in what he was saying, and on that day,
just three days from the worst attack on American soil
since Pearl Harbor in nineteen forty one, the rest of
the country believed it too. It was one of those
rare moments of consensus in America. It wouldn't last. Within weeks,
(33:56):
America would begin siphoning itself off into familiar tribe. Never
wanted to let a good crisis go to waste. Republicans
would eventually use the situation to grandly and disingenuously reorganize
their United States as imperialist ambitions in the Middle East,
and Democrats would use the situation to consolidate obstruction for
Bush's entire agenda. Both sides succeeded to varying degrees, and
(34:21):
both sides also failed fantastically, you know, like they always do.
But on that day, with the president down there, with
the people down in the rubble, bullhorn in his hand,
shouting from the heart like an impassioned Southern preacher, Ray
Charles saw hope, and he also saw himself as someone
who could remind America of its beauty. By two thousand
(34:43):
and one, Ray Charles was somewhat of an American institution.
After Kicking Dope, he had rebounded with a number one
hit on the R and B charts, the ironically titled
Let's Go Get Stoned. But over the decades, in a
discography now over fifty records long, his three number one
hit hits and his two gold records barely scratched the
surface of his influence on the music industry in pop
(35:05):
culture in general, from Cola commercials to Blues Brothers cameos
to current Hollywood talk of a biopic of his life.
Ray Charles had become part of the fabric of Americana.
So naturally, when America was hurting, Ray Charles wanted to
help rally the country. Like the President, Ray Charles knew
(35:25):
about hope. He also knew about grit and resilience. Ray
Charles was a symbol of resilience, a symbol of what
you can become no matter where you come from, no
matter how far down you are. And America at the
moment was down. But Ray Charles, the blind kid from
the Jim Crow South, who'd never seen himself as anything
but capable and the equal, was about to remind America
(35:48):
of its beauty. October twenty eighth, two thousand and one,
Game two of the World Series, a series which was
delayed because of the al Qaeda attack on the World
Trade Center, the hometown Diamondbacks were up a game against
the vaunted New York Yankees, who'd won the previous three
World series titles. The pregame Ceremony Packed House, America on Edge,
(36:11):
America on the.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Brink, Ladies and gentlemen, to honor America Araa with the
singing of Amratha the Beautiful, Please well go the man
and his soul, Mister Ray Will.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Charles America the Beautiful for a couple minutes there. In
two thousand and one, the genius of Ray Charles had
reimagined the Catherine Lee Bates song into a newfound national anthem.
The emotion in the performance is chilling, hair raising, with
nearly fifty thousand in attendance and sixteen million watching at home,
(36:53):
all keyed in to the same emotion. Hope, white, black, left, right, red, blue,
Republican Democrat. None of it matters. There is a fusion
that happens racing the song, a mass melding of oneness
of optimism. Just weeks after a near death blow in Arizona.
It's a phoenix rising, a reminder of our collective resilience,
(37:16):
a reminder to never lose sight of not only who
we are, but perhaps more important, of who we can become.
A reminder from a true visionary, a blind visionary. It's
Ray Charles Embody and Spirit in Soul Genius. I'm Jake
(37:38):
Brennan and this this Disgraceland from Disgraceland was created by
(38:01):
Yours Truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.
Credits for this episode can be found on the show
notes page at disgracelampod dot com. If you're listening as
a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show.
We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become
a member right now by going to disgracelampod dot com
Slash Membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland
(38:25):
ad free, Plus you'll get one brand new exclusive episode
every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and
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slash membership for details, rate and review the show, and
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(38:45):
and on YouTube at YouTube dot com slash at disgracelampod
Rock a Roller. He then
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