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p2pnet.net News:- Time magazine calls him The Genie. “It’s crying time,” says the Boston Herald. The Detroit Free Press says, “He sang with a shout, a tear, a laugh …“
Ray Charles is dead, aged 73.
“Blinded at six by glaucoma, schooled in classical, gospel and every form of popular music, he came to Atlantic Records in 1953, when the company’s boss, Ahmet Ertegun, bought Charles’ Swingtime Records contract for $2,500,” says the Times. “Ray brought with him a pioneering blend of gospel melodies, rhythm-and-blues raunch, a suavely swingin’ piano groove à la Nat Cole and the imposing sound of a big band behind him (though typically he worked with only six sidemen). Oh, and an epochal vocal style that would make him the 20th century’s dominant and longest-lived emissary of soul music to pop music.”
“In his own less-obvious and less-celebrated way, Charles affected the course of American popular music in the second half of the 20th century as surely and profoundly as did Elvis Presley,” says the Boston Herald. “He injected raw gospel fervor into the staid world of 1950s pop, blowing minds and setting the course for modern rhythm and blues and soul music in the process.”
“A great soul has gone on,” Aretha Franklin is quoted as saying in the Detroit Free Press. “He was a fabulous man, full of humor and wit. A giant of an artist, and of course, he introduced the world to secular soul singing. Undoubtedly, the music world will miss his voice. He’s the voice of a lifetime.”
He was a legend, says almost every story on his passing.
He was. And he always will be.
