WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.319 He was completely blind by the age of seven, 00:00:02.700 --> 00:00:05.700 orphan by the time he was 14. He grew up profoundly 00:00:05.700 --> 00:00:09.919 poor in the segregated South. And yet, by the 00:00:09.919 --> 00:00:12.599 time he was in his 30s, Frank Sinatra, a man 00:00:12.599 --> 00:00:15.199 who, you know, wasn't exactly known for tossing 00:00:15.199 --> 00:00:17.280 around casual compliments, was calling him the 00:00:17.280 --> 00:00:19.879 only true genius in show business. Right, which 00:00:19.879 --> 00:00:22.920 is just a massive legacy to unpack. I mean, when 00:00:22.920 --> 00:00:25.719 you look at most cultural icons, you usually 00:00:25.719 --> 00:00:29.640 see a clear linear path, right? They find a formula 00:00:29.640 --> 00:00:32.359 that works. They build a wall around their signature 00:00:32.359 --> 00:00:34.840 sound and they just sort of stay safely within 00:00:34.840 --> 00:00:36.659 the property lines of what the industry expects. 00:00:36.960 --> 00:00:39.020 Yeah. But then you look at the subject of today's 00:00:39.020 --> 00:00:41.719 deep dive, Ray Charles, and that whole architectural 00:00:41.719 --> 00:00:44.060 blueprint is just, well, it's torn to shreds. 00:00:44.100 --> 00:00:46.600 OK, let's unpack this because Ray Charles didn't 00:00:46.600 --> 00:00:48.679 just play within genres. He was like a musical 00:00:48.679 --> 00:00:51.600 architect who entirely ignored the zoning laws. 00:00:51.759 --> 00:00:54.200 He completely demolished the walls between gospel, 00:00:54.399 --> 00:00:58.030 blues, jazz and country. And for you listening 00:00:58.030 --> 00:01:00.429 right now, the mission today isn't just to list 00:01:00.429 --> 00:01:02.770 off his Grammy Awards or his hit singles. We 00:01:02.770 --> 00:01:04.810 all know he's a legend. Exactly. No, we have 00:01:04.810 --> 00:01:07.489 to go much deeper today. What's fascinating here 00:01:07.489 --> 00:01:10.450 is that we're looking at how this happened, how 00:01:10.450 --> 00:01:14.030 profound early traumas. combined with a ridiculously 00:01:14.030 --> 00:01:17.370 demanding unconventional education forged his 00:01:17.370 --> 00:01:20.930 ability to communicate raw human emotion in a 00:01:20.930 --> 00:01:22.870 way no one had ever really heard before. I mean, 00:01:23.069 --> 00:01:25.510 his sound wasn't an accident of nature. It was 00:01:25.510 --> 00:01:28.290 engineered under immense pressure. So let's start 00:01:28.290 --> 00:01:30.329 with that pressure. We're talking about Greenville, 00:01:30.329 --> 00:01:32.829 Florida in the 1930s. I was reading through the 00:01:32.829 --> 00:01:35.250 source material on his early life and the sheer 00:01:35.250 --> 00:01:37.530 volume of tragedy he faced before he even reached 00:01:37.530 --> 00:01:40.390 high school is just. It's difficult to process. 00:01:40.769 --> 00:01:43.750 It really is. I mean, he's a toddler. And his 00:01:43.750 --> 00:01:46.250 musical curiosity is sparked by a neighbor, a 00:01:46.250 --> 00:01:48.689 man named Wiley Pittman, who played boogie woogie 00:01:48.689 --> 00:01:51.390 on an old, upright piano at a local cafe. Right, 00:01:51.510 --> 00:01:53.810 but that spark is almost immediately suffocated 00:01:53.810 --> 00:01:56.290 by this unimaginable trauma. Yeah, he was around 00:01:56.290 --> 00:01:58.409 five years old when he watched his younger brother, 00:01:58.409 --> 00:02:00.650 George, accidentally drown in their mother's 00:02:00.650 --> 00:02:02.650 laundry tub. Yeah, Ray tried to pull him out, 00:02:02.810 --> 00:02:06.629 but he simply wasn't strong enough. And the psychological 00:02:06.629 --> 00:02:08.330 weight of that was followed almost instantly 00:02:08.330 --> 00:02:11.069 by a physical darkness. He started developing 00:02:11.069 --> 00:02:14.050 severe issues with his eyes, likely undiagnosed 00:02:14.050 --> 00:02:17.229 glaucoma, and within two years, his vision was 00:02:17.229 --> 00:02:19.729 entirely gone. Entirely gone by age seven. And 00:02:19.729 --> 00:02:22.150 then the final pillar of his childhood collapses. 00:02:22.710 --> 00:02:26.150 When he's 14, his mother dies. So he's blind, 00:02:26.389 --> 00:02:29.710 he's destitute, and he is entirely alone. But 00:02:29.710 --> 00:02:32.150 before his mother passed, She did something that 00:02:32.150 --> 00:02:34.250 would fundamentally alter the course of music 00:02:34.250 --> 00:02:37.189 history. She relentlessly used whatever meager 00:02:37.189 --> 00:02:39.229 connections she had to get him admitted to the 00:02:39.229 --> 00:02:41.689 Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in 00:02:41.689 --> 00:02:43.689 St. Augustine. And that's really the turning 00:02:43.689 --> 00:02:46.349 point, right? That decision is the catalyst for 00:02:46.349 --> 00:02:48.530 absolutely everything that follows. Because at 00:02:48.530 --> 00:02:50.490 this school, he isn't just learning to navigate 00:02:50.490 --> 00:02:52.810 the world without sight. He's being subjected 00:02:52.810 --> 00:02:56.379 to a rigorous classical musical education. And 00:02:56.379 --> 00:02:58.759 the mechanics of how a blind person learns to 00:02:58.759 --> 00:03:01.620 play complex classical pieces in the 1930s is 00:03:01.620 --> 00:03:04.360 just absolutely fascinating. This part blew my 00:03:04.360 --> 00:03:06.939 mind because I think people assume, you know, 00:03:07.199 --> 00:03:09.259 you just learn by ear, right? Someone plays a 00:03:09.259 --> 00:03:11.800 chord, you copy it. But he was actually reading 00:03:11.800 --> 00:03:15.400 and writing sheet music. How do you even read 00:03:15.400 --> 00:03:18.120 a musical score if you can't see the paper? Well, 00:03:18.300 --> 00:03:21.199 you use Braille music. which is a painstakingly 00:03:21.199 --> 00:03:23.479 compartmentalized method. Think about standard 00:03:23.479 --> 00:03:26.099 sheet music for a piano. A sighted person can 00:03:26.099 --> 00:03:28.259 look at the page and see the treble clef for 00:03:28.259 --> 00:03:30.199 the right hand and the bass clef for the left 00:03:30.199 --> 00:03:33.439 hand simultaneously. Your brain processes both 00:03:33.439 --> 00:03:35.120 at once. Right, you take it all in together. 00:03:35.419 --> 00:03:37.620 Exactly. But Braille music doesn't allow for 00:03:37.620 --> 00:03:39.580 that. Because your fingers are your eyes. You 00:03:39.580 --> 00:03:41.620 can't, like, read the page and strike the keys 00:03:41.620 --> 00:03:43.900 with the same hand at the same time. Precisely. 00:03:44.250 --> 00:03:47.389 So his teacher, Mrs. Lawrence, taught him this 00:03:47.389 --> 00:03:49.889 incredibly demanding sequence. He would have 00:03:49.889 --> 00:03:51.990 to read the Braille score for the left hand piano 00:03:51.990 --> 00:03:55.389 movements using his right hand. Then he would 00:03:55.389 --> 00:03:57.810 memorize that entire sequence. Just the left 00:03:57.810 --> 00:04:01.349 hand part. Right. Next he would swap. He'd read 00:04:01.349 --> 00:04:03.110 the Braille score for the right hand movements 00:04:03.110 --> 00:04:06.990 using his left hand and memorize that. Only after 00:04:06.990 --> 00:04:09.289 he had fully internalized both separate parts 00:04:09.289 --> 00:04:12.560 could he sit back mentally superimpose the two 00:04:12.560 --> 00:04:14.960 halves together, and physically play the piece 00:04:14.960 --> 00:04:17.839 with both hands. That is just wild. Imagine trying 00:04:17.839 --> 00:04:20.560 to read one book with your left hand, type a 00:04:20.560 --> 00:04:22.139 completely different book with your right hand, 00:04:22.220 --> 00:04:25.319 and do it all in the dark from memory. The cognitive 00:04:25.319 --> 00:04:27.639 load required to do that is just staggering. 00:04:27.759 --> 00:04:30.000 It's immense. And he wasn't doing this with simple 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:33.519 nursery rhymes. He was memorizing Bach. Mozart, 00:04:33.800 --> 00:04:37.019 Beethoven, how does that intense mental gymnastics 00:04:37.019 --> 00:04:39.480 actually shape the way he eventually writes his 00:04:39.480 --> 00:04:42.579 own music? Well, it forces a complete hyper internalization 00:04:42.579 --> 00:04:44.740 of the sound. He couldn't rely on a piece of 00:04:44.740 --> 00:04:47.060 paper to remind him of a chord progression. The 00:04:47.060 --> 00:04:49.259 entire architecture of the song had to live inside 00:04:49.259 --> 00:04:51.740 his head before his fingers ever touch the keys. 00:04:51.959 --> 00:04:55.579 And when you combine that intense compartmentalized 00:04:55.579 --> 00:04:58.800 mental focus, with the immense grief he was carrying 00:04:58.800 --> 00:05:01.819 from his childhood, you get a highly unique emotional 00:05:01.819 --> 00:05:04.439 delivery system. He had to channel all those 00:05:04.439 --> 00:05:07.800 complex feelings entirely into sound. You know, 00:05:07.879 --> 00:05:09.939 there's a quote in our sources from the musicologist 00:05:09.939 --> 00:05:12.420 Henry Pleasence that really stuck with me. He 00:05:12.420 --> 00:05:14.220 contrasts Ray Charles with someone like Frank 00:05:14.220 --> 00:05:17.019 Sinatra. Sinatra was a master of words. You know, 00:05:17.019 --> 00:05:20.000 he can make you feel a lyric through phrasing 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:22.680 and diction. But Pleasence argues Ray Charles 00:05:22.680 --> 00:05:25.060 became a master of sounds. Because conventional 00:05:25.060 --> 00:05:27.839 vocabulary was completely inadequate to express 00:05:27.839 --> 00:05:30.939 the level of despair or exaltation that Ray Charles 00:05:30.939 --> 00:05:33.220 had experienced. I mean, words just weren't enough. 00:05:33.459 --> 00:05:36.300 So he bypasses the lyric entirely. Right. He 00:05:36.300 --> 00:05:38.319 uses this extraordinary assortment of slurs, 00:05:38.480 --> 00:05:41.259 glides, shrieks, wails, breaks, and falsettos. 00:05:41.379 --> 00:05:42.699 He couldn't just tell you he was in pain. He 00:05:42.699 --> 00:05:45.500 had to physically try out to you. Under stress, 00:05:45.839 --> 00:05:48.399 his voice would stretch over three octaves. It 00:05:48.399 --> 00:05:50.519 functioned as a literal pressure valve for his 00:05:50.519 --> 00:05:53.519 life. So you have this teenager who is classically 00:05:53.519 --> 00:05:56.500 trained, mentally disciplined by Braille, and 00:05:56.500 --> 00:05:59.519 carrying this massive reservoir of trauma. He 00:05:59.519 --> 00:06:02.560 leaves Florida. completely uproots himself and 00:06:02.560 --> 00:06:05.519 moves as far away as possible to Seattle, Washington 00:06:05.519 --> 00:06:08.259 in 1948. Yeah, all the way across the country. 00:06:08.279 --> 00:06:11.040 He starts playing the 1 a .m. to 5 a .m. shifts 00:06:11.040 --> 00:06:14.060 at clubs. He even meets a 15 -year -old Quincy 00:06:14.060 --> 00:06:17.379 Jones there. And slowly, the industry starts 00:06:17.379 --> 00:06:20.720 to catch on. Right. By 1952, Atlantic Records 00:06:20.720 --> 00:06:23.899 sees the potential. They buy his contract from 00:06:23.899 --> 00:06:26.509 a smaller label called Swingtime Records. And 00:06:26.509 --> 00:06:28.750 the price tag on that contract is just hilarious 00:06:28.750 --> 00:06:31.990 in hindsight. $2 ,500. I mean, even adjusted 00:06:31.990 --> 00:06:34.209 for inflation, it is the bargain of the century. 00:06:34.209 --> 00:06:36.589 It really is considering what happens next. At 00:06:36.589 --> 00:06:38.949 Atlantic, he stops mimicking his early aisles, 00:06:39.149 --> 00:06:41.470 like Nat King Cole, and starts forging something 00:06:41.470 --> 00:06:43.889 entirely unprecedented. And this is where we 00:06:43.889 --> 00:06:45.529 have to look at the actual mechanics of how he 00:06:45.529 --> 00:06:48.509 invented a new genre. Let's look at late 1954, 00:06:49.009 --> 00:06:50.910 when he records I've Got a Woman. Okay, what 00:06:50.910 --> 00:06:53.250 is the actual musical recipe here? Because people 00:06:53.250 --> 00:06:55.370 say he invented soul music, but what does that 00:06:55.370 --> 00:06:57.629 practically mean in the recording studio? Well, 00:06:57.790 --> 00:07:00.250 it means taking the sacred and colliding it with 00:07:00.250 --> 00:07:04.730 the profane. Oh, God. A Woman was actually a 00:07:04.730 --> 00:07:07.029 direct reworked version of a gospel tune by the 00:07:07.029 --> 00:07:09.589 Southern Tones called It Must Be Jesus. Okay. 00:07:09.819 --> 00:07:12.360 In The Black Church, gospel music was designed 00:07:12.360 --> 00:07:15.019 to build a congregation to a spiritual frenzy. 00:07:15.420 --> 00:07:18.939 You have a driving 128 -time signature, the aggressive 00:07:18.939 --> 00:07:21.439 tambourine on the backbeat, the call and response 00:07:21.439 --> 00:07:23.879 between the preacher and the choir. Ray Charles 00:07:23.879 --> 00:07:27.300 literally lifted that exact escalating frantic 00:07:27.300 --> 00:07:30.120 tempo and those sacred chord progressions. But 00:07:30.120 --> 00:07:32.180 instead of singing about salvation and Jesus, 00:07:32.279 --> 00:07:34.579 he strips out the theology and replaces it with 00:07:34.579 --> 00:07:36.699 lyrics about Saturday night romance and worldly 00:07:36.699 --> 00:07:39.459 desires. Exactly. He applies the mechanics of 00:07:39.459 --> 00:07:41.579 religious worship to the secular world. That 00:07:41.579 --> 00:07:44.459 feels incredibly dangerous for the 1950s. You're 00:07:44.459 --> 00:07:46.720 taking solemn, sacred church music and turning 00:07:46.720 --> 00:07:49.139 it into the soundtrack for a rowdy juke joint. 00:07:49.279 --> 00:07:51.319 I mean, it's like taking a solemn church choir 00:07:51.319 --> 00:07:53.519 and making them the house band at a lively Saturday 00:07:53.519 --> 00:07:56.100 night bar. That had to alienate people. Oh, it 00:07:56.100 --> 00:07:59.079 caused massive outrage. Gospel purists thought 00:07:59.079 --> 00:08:01.399 he was being sacrilegious, practically doing 00:08:01.399 --> 00:08:04.540 the devil's work. Meanwhile, traditional R &B 00:08:04.540 --> 00:08:06.620 and blues purists thought the music sounded too 00:08:06.620 --> 00:08:09.019 holy, too chaotic. Wow, so he's getting it from 00:08:09.019 --> 00:08:11.720 both sides. Totally, but the tension he created 00:08:11.720 --> 00:08:14.060 by sitting right in the middle of those two extremes 00:08:14.060 --> 00:08:17.379 was magnetic. If we connect this to the bigger 00:08:17.379 --> 00:08:20.060 picture, people were shocked, but they couldn't 00:08:20.060 --> 00:08:23.439 stop listening. He gave birth to soul music by 00:08:23.439 --> 00:08:26.259 proving the spiritual ecstasy and romantic ecstasy 00:08:26.259 --> 00:08:29.259 sound exactly the same. And the absolute zenith 00:08:29.259 --> 00:08:33.220 of this fusion happens in 1959 with... What'd 00:08:33.220 --> 00:08:35.419 I say? I was looking at the timeline of the song, 00:08:35.659 --> 00:08:37.480 and the wildest part is that there was no sheet 00:08:37.480 --> 00:08:40.080 music. It wasn't planned. Not at all. It was 00:08:40.080 --> 00:08:42.840 pure, spontaneous creation. He was playing a 00:08:42.840 --> 00:08:44.580 show in a club, they'd burned through their entire 00:08:44.580 --> 00:08:46.500 set list, and there was still 12 minutes left 00:08:46.500 --> 00:08:49.080 on the clock. Just trying to fill time. Exactly. 00:08:49.440 --> 00:08:51.840 He turns to his backing vocalists, the Reillettes, 00:08:52.360 --> 00:08:54.320 and basically says, whatever I do, just follow 00:08:54.320 --> 00:08:57.559 me. He starts playing this infectious Latin -tinged 00:08:57.559 --> 00:09:00.440 riff on a Wurlitzer electric piano and then moves 00:09:00.440 --> 00:09:04.080 into this intensely suggestive call -and -response 00:09:04.080 --> 00:09:06.360 moaning with the singers. The atmosphere in that 00:09:06.360 --> 00:09:08.179 room must have been electric, but of course it 00:09:08.179 --> 00:09:10.480 was immediately banned by several radio stations 00:09:10.480 --> 00:09:12.960 for being too sexually explicit. Yeah, but the 00:09:12.960 --> 00:09:15.240 bands didn't matter. It became his first top 00:09:15.240 --> 00:09:17.679 ten pop record. He was laying the foundation 00:09:17.679 --> 00:09:19.460 for everything that would happen in rock and 00:09:19.460 --> 00:09:22.600 roll and soul for the next two decades. You have 00:09:22.600 --> 00:09:25.090 to wonder though, How does a guy who grew up 00:09:25.090 --> 00:09:27.029 entirely marginalized, who is just bought by 00:09:27.029 --> 00:09:28.990 Atlantic for pocket change a few years prior, 00:09:29.730 --> 00:09:32.029 suddenly decide he dictates the terms of the 00:09:32.029 --> 00:09:34.870 entire music industry? Because once he realizes 00:09:34.870 --> 00:09:37.529 he holds the keys to this new sound, his artistic 00:09:37.529 --> 00:09:40.990 vision demands business leverage. So in 1959, 00:09:41.210 --> 00:09:43.809 his contract with Atlantic is up and ABC Records 00:09:43.809 --> 00:09:46.549 approaches him. And the deal ABC offered was 00:09:46.549 --> 00:09:49.289 so mathematically unheard of that when Ray took 00:09:49.289 --> 00:09:51.450 it back to Atlantic to see if they would counter 00:09:51.450 --> 00:09:54.480 the founders of Atl - Jerry Wexler and Ahmet 00:09:54.480 --> 00:09:57.940 Erdogan literally looked at the paper and told 00:09:57.940 --> 00:10:00.059 him if these people are sincere you have to go 00:10:00.059 --> 00:10:01.899 with them. They couldn't even pretend to match 00:10:01.899 --> 00:10:04.080 it. Break down the mechanics of this deal for 00:10:04.080 --> 00:10:06.379 us because this isn't just about getting a bigger 00:10:06.379 --> 00:10:08.740 paycheck. This is about structural power. Right. 00:10:08.960 --> 00:10:13.000 First he secured a $50 ,000 annual advance in 00:10:13.000 --> 00:10:16.379 1959 for a black artist. That was astronomical. 00:10:17.019 --> 00:10:19.860 He also secured a profit split of 75 cents on 00:10:19.860 --> 00:10:22.000 the dollar, meaning he kept the vast majority 00:10:22.000 --> 00:10:24.039 of the revenue his music generated. Which is 00:10:24.039 --> 00:10:27.240 huge. But the most crucial element, the absolute 00:10:27.240 --> 00:10:30.100 holy grail of the music business, was that he 00:10:30.100 --> 00:10:33.620 demanded and won ownership of his master tapes. 00:10:34.109 --> 00:10:36.470 Let's clarify why that matters so much. A lot 00:10:36.470 --> 00:10:38.389 of people here owning your masters and just think 00:10:38.389 --> 00:10:40.889 it means keeping a copy of the tape on a shelf, 00:10:41.330 --> 00:10:43.570 but it's so much bigger than that. It's like 00:10:43.570 --> 00:10:46.049 paying a construction company to build a house, 00:10:46.149 --> 00:10:48.110 but the construction company gets to keep the 00:10:48.110 --> 00:10:50.409 deed forever and they charge you rent to live 00:10:50.409 --> 00:10:52.629 in it. That's a great way to put it. In the music 00:10:52.629 --> 00:10:54.950 industry, the label usually owns the underlying 00:10:54.950 --> 00:10:58.210 original recordings. Every time that song is 00:10:58.210 --> 00:11:00.450 pressed to vinyl, played on a radio, or licensed 00:11:00.450 --> 00:11:03.370 for a commercial, the label holds the keys and 00:11:03.370 --> 00:11:07.230 takes the lion's share. Exactly. Ray Charles 00:11:07.230 --> 00:11:09.929 demanded the deed to the House. He ensured that 00:11:09.929 --> 00:11:12.309 after a set period, the total control and ownership 00:11:12.309 --> 00:11:15.809 of his recordings reverted to him, not the executives. 00:11:15.970 --> 00:11:18.649 To have that kind of foresight in the late 1950s 00:11:18.649 --> 00:11:21.129 is staggering. He trusted no one but himself. 00:11:21.230 --> 00:11:24.429 And with that total unshakable creative and financial 00:11:24.429 --> 00:11:26.909 control, what does he do? He pivots entirely. 00:11:27.129 --> 00:11:30.090 He releases Georgia On My Mind in 1960, which 00:11:30.090 --> 00:11:33.309 sweeps the Grammys. But then, in 1962, he makes 00:11:33.309 --> 00:11:35.429 a move that genuinely makes no sense on paper. 00:11:35.909 --> 00:11:38.149 He releases an album called Modern Sounds and 00:11:38.149 --> 00:11:40.549 Country and Western Music. Featuring his legendary 00:11:40.549 --> 00:11:43.110 cover of the Don Gibson song, I Can't Stop Loving 00:11:43.110 --> 00:11:45.970 You. Hold on. Here's where it gets really interesting. 00:11:46.649 --> 00:11:50.970 It is 1962. The American South is violently segregated. 00:11:51.279 --> 00:11:53.799 Civil rights protests are dominating the news. 00:11:54.399 --> 00:11:57.120 You are telling me a pioneering black R &B artist 00:11:57.120 --> 00:11:59.940 at the absolute height of his fame decides a 00:11:59.940 --> 00:12:02.059 country and western album is a good career move? 00:12:02.399 --> 00:12:04.360 That sounds like commercial suicide. Why would 00:12:04.360 --> 00:12:07.899 he do that? Because musically and narratively, 00:12:08.159 --> 00:12:10.019 Ray Charles recognized that country music and 00:12:10.019 --> 00:12:12.850 the blues are essentially cousins. Really? Yeah. 00:12:12.870 --> 00:12:14.710 I mean, both genres are built on working class 00:12:14.710 --> 00:12:16.950 struggles, heartbreak, and storytelling. Charles 00:12:16.950 --> 00:12:18.809 understood that if he applied his jazz phrasing, 00:12:19.309 --> 00:12:21.789 his soul stylings, and large orchestral arrangements 00:12:21.789 --> 00:12:24.470 to these rural country standards, he could elevate 00:12:24.470 --> 00:12:26.330 them. So he's proving that emotional resonance 00:12:26.330 --> 00:12:28.549 doesn't care about genre boundaries, or racial 00:12:28.549 --> 00:12:31.029 boundaries for that matter. Exactly. It was a 00:12:31.029 --> 00:12:33.850 massive cultural risk. But the math checked out. 00:12:34.830 --> 00:12:38.950 I can't stop loving him. You topped both the 00:12:38.950 --> 00:12:41.850 pop and R &B charts for weeks. He essentially 00:12:41.850 --> 00:12:44.309 integrated American music genres during a time 00:12:44.309 --> 00:12:46.169 when integrating a lunch counter could get you 00:12:46.169 --> 00:12:48.750 arrested. He brought country music into the mainstream 00:12:48.750 --> 00:12:51.389 pop consciousness in a way no white country artist 00:12:51.389 --> 00:12:53.470 had managed to do at that time. We have this 00:12:53.470 --> 00:12:56.789 image building of a man who is an invincible 00:12:56.789 --> 00:12:59.809 negotiator. a musical genius who sees connections 00:12:59.809 --> 00:13:02.509 no one else sees, and an artist in total control 00:13:02.509 --> 00:13:04.870 of his destiny. But when you look at the source 00:13:04.870 --> 00:13:07.629 material detailing his private life, there is 00:13:07.629 --> 00:13:10.309 a massive, incredibly dark shadow running parallel 00:13:10.309 --> 00:13:13.029 to all of this success. There is. The control 00:13:13.029 --> 00:13:14.809 he exercised in the boardroom and the studio 00:13:14.809 --> 00:13:18.259 did not extend to his personal life. For 17 years 00:13:18.259 --> 00:13:20.620 Ray Charles fought a severe heroin addiction 00:13:20.620 --> 00:13:22.820 He actually started using when he was just 16 00:13:22.820 --> 00:13:24.659 years old right around the time he was hustling 00:13:24.659 --> 00:13:26.960 in clubs in Florida in Seattle Which means throughout 00:13:26.960 --> 00:13:29.000 the entire invention of soul music throughout 00:13:29.000 --> 00:13:31.879 the genius negotiations with ABC He was managing 00:13:31.879 --> 00:13:34.360 a full -blown opioid addiction while touring 00:13:34.360 --> 00:13:37.200 globally the sheer logistics of hiding that are 00:13:37.200 --> 00:13:39.519 terrifying It really is and eventually caught 00:13:39.519 --> 00:13:43.460 up with him as his fame grew the insulation around 00:13:43.460 --> 00:13:46.830 him grew but the addiction deepened It culminated 00:13:46.830 --> 00:13:49.509 in a massive turning point, which was a Halloween 00:13:49.509 --> 00:13:53.669 1964 arrest at Boston's Logan Airport for possession 00:13:53.669 --> 00:13:56.269 of heroin. He was facing significant prison time 00:13:56.269 --> 00:13:59.490 for this, right? He was. To avoid prison, he 00:13:59.490 --> 00:14:02.169 agreed to enter a rehabilitated facility in California. 00:14:03.169 --> 00:14:05.450 And he didn't gently taper off. He endured a 00:14:05.450 --> 00:14:08.190 brutal four -day cold turkey withdrawal. Oh, 00:14:08.190 --> 00:14:10.850 wow. The judge ultimately gave him a suspended 00:14:10.850 --> 00:14:14.370 sentence and probation, largely because his psychiatrist 00:14:14.370 --> 00:14:17.250 testified to his absolute determination to stay 00:14:17.250 --> 00:14:20.330 clean. He kicked a 17 -year heroin habit, cold 00:14:20.330 --> 00:14:23.409 turkey. The willpower required for that is unimaginable. 00:14:23.850 --> 00:14:26.389 And how does he respond to the media circus surrounding 00:14:26.389 --> 00:14:28.769 his admission and rehab? He immediately goes 00:14:28.769 --> 00:14:30.889 back into the studio and records two songs, I 00:14:30.889 --> 00:14:32.769 Don't Need No Doctor and Let's Go Get Stoned. 00:14:33.049 --> 00:14:35.629 It is such a defiant reclamation of his own narrative. 00:14:35.750 --> 00:14:38.730 He refused to be a victim of his own story. But 00:14:38.730 --> 00:14:41.330 his complexities didn't end with addiction. This 00:14:41.330 --> 00:14:43.210 race is an important question about his legacy 00:14:43.210 --> 00:14:45.409 because his political actions were full of fascinating 00:14:45.409 --> 00:14:48.789 paradoxes. In 1961 he was scheduled to play a 00:14:48.789 --> 00:14:51.029 show in Augusta, Georgia. He found out the dance 00:14:51.029 --> 00:14:53.769 floor was strictly segregated. White attendees 00:14:53.769 --> 00:14:56.409 on the main floor, black attendees restricted 00:14:56.409 --> 00:14:59.309 to the balcony. Charles flat -out refused to 00:14:59.309 --> 00:15:02.070 play. canceled the show and willingly took a 00:15:02.070 --> 00:15:06.629 $757 fine for breach of contract. A massive public 00:15:06.629 --> 00:15:09.429 financial hit to protest segregation. But then 00:15:09.429 --> 00:15:12.190 you roll the clock forward 20 years to 1981 and 00:15:12.190 --> 00:15:15.009 he faces intense international backlash for choosing 00:15:15.009 --> 00:15:17.929 to perform at the Sun City Resort in South Africa 00:15:17.929 --> 00:15:20.570 during the height of the apartheid boycott. Right. 00:15:20.669 --> 00:15:22.750 And he defended the decision by arguing that 00:15:22.750 --> 00:15:25.409 his music would force the audience of black and 00:15:25.409 --> 00:15:27.789 white fans to integrate while he was there. It 00:15:27.789 --> 00:15:30.470 shows a man who operated entirely by his own 00:15:30.470 --> 00:15:32.750 internal logic, regardless of public opinion 00:15:32.750 --> 00:15:35.269 or political expectations. He didn't conform 00:15:35.269 --> 00:15:37.529 to anyone's idea of who he was supposed to be. 00:15:37.909 --> 00:15:39.970 Exactly. Which brings up a detail in the research 00:15:39.970 --> 00:15:42.549 that I absolutely love because it perfectly illustrates 00:15:42.549 --> 00:15:45.289 that internal logic and his need for total control, 00:15:45.409 --> 00:15:48.309 his hobby. He was obsessed with chess. He was. 00:15:48.529 --> 00:15:51.649 He actually learned the game from his psychiatrist, 00:15:51.710 --> 00:15:54.250 Dr. Hacker, while he was in rehab in California. 00:15:54.409 --> 00:15:57.490 He played on a specially designed pegboard with 00:15:57.490 --> 00:16:00.309 raised squares and holes for the pieces so he 00:16:00.309 --> 00:16:03.029 could feel the layout of the entire board. There's 00:16:03.029 --> 00:16:05.470 this great anecdote where someone asks him if 00:16:05.470 --> 00:16:07.169 people ever tried to cheat him because he was 00:16:07.169 --> 00:16:10.490 blind. And he gives this incredibly sharp humorous 00:16:10.490 --> 00:16:12.669 response. He says, you can't cheat in chess. 00:16:12.730 --> 00:16:14.470 I'm going to see that. He took it incredibly 00:16:14.470 --> 00:16:17.149 seriously. He even played a match against Larry 00:16:17.149 --> 00:16:20.470 Evans, an American chess grandmaster. Now, Charles 00:16:20.470 --> 00:16:23.509 lost the match, naturally. But Evans noted that 00:16:23.509 --> 00:16:26.429 Charles actually spotted a complex tactical trap 00:16:26.429 --> 00:16:28.750 that Evans had set. He wasn't just moving pieces. 00:16:28.789 --> 00:16:31.230 He was genuinely calculating multiple moves ahead. 00:16:31.629 --> 00:16:33.149 So what does this all mean? When you look at 00:16:33.149 --> 00:16:36.169 the chessboard, the ABC business negotiations, 00:16:36.490 --> 00:16:39.690 the ability to kick a 17 -year heroin addiction 00:16:39.690 --> 00:16:42.610 cold turkey, you realize Ray Charles was the 00:16:42.610 --> 00:16:45.429 ultimate master of compartmentalization. He was 00:16:45.429 --> 00:16:48.070 a man who funded millions of dollars for hearing 00:16:48.070 --> 00:16:50.470 disorder research. through his foundation, who 00:16:50.470 --> 00:16:52.950 fundamentally changed civil rights through his 00:16:52.950 --> 00:16:55.730 art, and who fathered 12 children with nine different 00:16:55.730 --> 00:16:58.889 women. He was chaotic, disciplined, agonizing, 00:16:58.970 --> 00:17:01.330 and ecstatic all at once. And knowing about those 00:17:01.330 --> 00:17:03.769 personal struggles, those demons, it doesn't 00:17:03.769 --> 00:17:06.210 diminish his art. If anything, it gives you the 00:17:06.210 --> 00:17:08.829 context for the raw, undeniable pain you hear 00:17:08.829 --> 00:17:11.369 in his voice. The pressure valve had to release 00:17:11.369 --> 00:17:13.589 somewhere. You cannot separate the agony from 00:17:13.589 --> 00:17:16.089 the ecstasy in his music. It's all the same fabric. 00:17:16.410 --> 00:17:18.599 Brad Charles passed away in 2005. from liver 00:17:18.599 --> 00:17:20.859 failure, but the final chapter of his life is 00:17:20.859 --> 00:17:23.079 a testament to the sheer endurance of his talent. 00:17:23.740 --> 00:17:26.059 His final album, Genius Loves Company, was released 00:17:26.059 --> 00:17:28.940 posthumously, and it absolutely swept the industry. 00:17:29.079 --> 00:17:31.460 It won eight Grammy Awards, bringing his lifetime 00:17:31.460 --> 00:17:35.079 total to 17 Grammys out of 37 nominations. He 00:17:35.079 --> 00:17:38.579 received a U .S. Postal stamp in his honor. But 00:17:38.579 --> 00:17:40.859 perhaps the most poetic piece of his legacy happened 00:17:40.859 --> 00:17:44.099 in 1979. Oh, the state song. Yeah, the state 00:17:44.099 --> 00:17:46.740 of Georgia. The exact same state where he refused 00:17:46.740 --> 00:17:49.460 to play the segregated hall in Augusta and was 00:17:49.460 --> 00:17:51.859 sued for it, officially named his rendition of 00:17:51.859 --> 00:17:55.099 Georgia on my mind as the state song. From being 00:17:55.099 --> 00:17:57.519 banned in the state for demanding equality to 00:17:57.519 --> 00:17:59.680 having his voice represent the state forever. 00:17:59.880 --> 00:18:02.940 It's incredible. So as you reflect on all of 00:18:02.940 --> 00:18:06.759 this today, why does this deep dive matter? Beyond 00:18:06.759 --> 00:18:08.880 just learning music history, Ray Charles is living 00:18:08.880 --> 00:18:11.579 proof that the boundaries we accept is absolute 00:18:11.579 --> 00:18:14.619 truth. are often just illusions, whether it's 00:18:14.619 --> 00:18:16.480 the genre of music you're supposed to play, the 00:18:16.480 --> 00:18:18.779 physical limitations of your own body, or the 00:18:18.779 --> 00:18:21.259 standard business practices of a ruthless industry. 00:18:21.500 --> 00:18:23.539 He proved that those walls are just waiting to 00:18:23.539 --> 00:18:26.299 be shattered by someone with enough vision and 00:18:26.299 --> 00:18:29.019 the audacity to demand more. And that leads us 00:18:29.019 --> 00:18:30.900 to a final thought I want you to mull over. Think 00:18:30.900 --> 00:18:33.539 back to that ABC Records contract. In today's 00:18:33.539 --> 00:18:35.799 era, modern pop megastars are still fighting 00:18:35.799 --> 00:18:38.279 tooth and nail against industry machinery. You 00:18:38.279 --> 00:18:40.619 have massive artists today spending years re 00:18:40.619 --> 00:18:42.759 -recording their entire back catalogs just to 00:18:42.759 --> 00:18:45.460 gain ownership of their master tapes. Ray Charles 00:18:45.460 --> 00:18:49.519 secured his in the late 1950s. If a blind black 00:18:49.519 --> 00:18:52.019 man in the pre -civil rights era carrying the 00:18:52.019 --> 00:18:54.279 weight of childhood trauma and addiction could 00:18:54.279 --> 00:18:57.339 out calculate and out negotiate the entire entrenched 00:18:57.339 --> 00:18:59.859 music industry, what impossible barriers in your 00:18:59.859 --> 00:19:02.359 own life or your own industry are you simply 00:19:02.190 --> 00:19:04.069 accepting it's just the way things are. Remember 00:19:04.069 --> 00:19:05.490 the architect we talked about at the beginning? 00:19:05.890 --> 00:19:07.890 Maybe it's time you started ignoring the zoning 00:19:07.890 --> 00:19:08.230 laws.