Ray Charles: Man and Music is a complete biography of this seminal singer/pianist who has been active on the American music scene since the mid-'50s. Originally published in 1995 by Penguin Books, and universally hailed as the definitive biography, this new edition will bring Charles's life up to date, covering the last 7 years of his life.There are only a few legendary singers who have developed mass audiences while pursuing their own artistic visions: Sinatra is one; Ella Fitzgerald another. Ray Charles undoubtedly belongs in this pantheon of major musical stars. Ray Charles: Man and Music begins with Charles's impoverished childhood in Greenville, Florida, where tragedy struck early when the young Charles went blind at age 6 and was orphaned at age 14. Driven by his enormous talent and determination, Charles landed work playing some of the toughest juke joints in the state, fought heroin addiction, and finally landed a recording contract with Atlantic Records. Unlike other R&B singers, Charles took control of his career from its earliest days, moving on from his gospel-soul stylings of the mid-'50s to break through musical barriers, recording two country albums in the late '50s (at a time when the black presence in country music was barely felt), pure jazz, and then the powerful pop hits of the '60s. Famed music journalist Michael Lydon - a founding editor of Rolling Stone - is uniquely qualified to document Charles's career, having interviewed Charles and followed the star's performances since the 1960s. Originally published in 1995, and universally hailed as the definitive biography, this new edition brings Charles's life up to date, covering the last 7 years of his life. It coincides with the release of a made-for-TV movie starring Jamie Fox as Charles, currently in production by Taylor Hackford. Charles has also issued a new CD recently and remains active as a touring artist throughout the world. "Lydon is obviously a very gifted and very sensitive writer--his prose lilting and poetic, drunk on the invisible rhythms of the music each syllable softly falling like beads of water against the wide windows of the dawn-hour. Readers will find this an easy book to consume- pages almost turning themselves, eyes feverishly tracking back and forth, anxious to see where everything ends." -- The Electric Review Michael Lydon was a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine and one fo the most highly regarded rock journalists of his generation. He is the author of Flashbacks: Eyewitness Accounts of the Rock Revolution (Routledge, 2003). He resides in New York City. Ray Charles Man and Music By Michael Lydon Routledge Copyright © 2004 Michael Lydon All right reserved. ISBN: 9780415970433 Chapter One I was born with music inside me. Like my ribs, my liver, my kidneys, my heart. Like my blood. Ray Charles Greenville 1930-1937 For a hundred miles west of the Atlantic coast,the land of northern Florida lies flat as a floor covered by a thick rug ofgray-green vegetation. In fertile fields, venerable live oaks, bearded bySpanish moss, bend grandly to earth. Bright green palmettos bunch cheerfullyaround slender brown trunks in the piney woods, and creepers tangle everythingin flowered variety and profusion. East of the Suwannee River, the land ismarshy; lakes and ponds and lazy creeks abound. West of the Suwannee, the landstarts a gradual rise, and the old east-west road, U.S. 90, begins to undulateto the rhythm of mountains eroding into plain, a rhythm that accelerates slowlyinto rolling hills and pastured valleys over the sixty miles to Tallahassee.Atop the first real hill in the rhythm stands the Madison County courthouse.The six windows of its silver cupola survey the territory in all directionslike six bright eyes. In 1776 that territory was a wilderness. Then white settlers brought slavesto fell the virgin forests and to plant cotton and tobacco, wresting the landfrom the Indians and the Spanish, until in 1821 Spain ceded the whole peninsulato the new United States of America. Sandy Ford, at a ford on the AucillaRiver, was the first settlement to spring up in Madison County's westernreaches. The second was Station Five, the fifth stop from Tallahassee on theFlorida Central and Western Railway. In 1876 an ambitious settler, Elijah James Hays, bought a huge tract of landsurrounding Station Five and began using the station to market his plantation'slivestock, cotton, tobacco, and timber. Hays owned a general store, abrickyard, and a turpentine still; he sold his cotton direct to W. W. Gordon,exporters in Savannah. Hays' enterprise drew tradesmen and their families, andthe railroad village prospered as Sandy Ford declined. By 1887 the town'sLadies Aid Society had decided that Station Five needed a more genteel name.Mrs. Morgan, a native of Greenville, South Carolina, suggested that Greenvillesounded nice and refined. Their husbands spit skeptically at the notion that anew nam