There’s an old cliche that says you can’t sing the blues if you haven’t known pain. I don’t know if that’s literally true, but it’s pretty obvious that those who have suffered and overcome hardship are able to inject a certain richness of texture into their work, a level of emotion and complexity that other, more naive artists have a hard time achieving. If you want proof of that, have a listen to Ray Charles’ best-known song, “Georgia on My Mind.” If you have the means, listen to it on vinyl, with all the organic pops and scratches that come with that format. It’s a melancholy tune of lost love; performed by any other musician that’s all it ever could<\/i> be. But when Ray sang it, there was much more going on there than mere sadness.<\/p>\n
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His voice was imperfect, as imperfect as that 45 rpm single and the old phonograph you inherited from your grandmother, the one with the fuzzy sound reproduction and the penny taped to the tone arm to keep it from dancing across the record. And yet Ray’s imperfect voice was, paradoxically, the best possible one for this particular song.<\/p>\n
Even in his earliest recordings of “Georgia,” which he performed many, many times over the course of his life, Ray sounded like an old man. Maybe it was because he was blind, or because he was a black man who lived during Segregation. He struggled for years with a heroin addiction, and that might have contributed to his exhausted edge. Maybe he just had an old soul that enabled him to imagine what the song was really about. Whatever the reason, as you listen, you’ll hear things that go far beyond the sparse lyrics. You’ll hear regret and loss, yes, but also the memory of past joy. You’ll feel the love that this man once felt for his lost Georgia; more importantly, you’ll feel the love that he received from her. You’ll feel sunshine as young lovers walked hand-in-hand alongside a slow, muddy canal. You’ll understand in some deep, inarticulate way why all the others, as good as they were, never matched up to this One True Love, this Georgia. All this information contained in a brief, simple combination of a piano and a human voice. The voice of a man who had known pain in his life and learned how to use it. “Georgia on My Mind” is a masterpiece, one of my all-time favorite songs. But only when it’s performed by Ray Charles. No one else can do it justice.<\/p>\n
Anne and I were lucky enough to hear him sing it live a few years ago. It may have been his last appearance in Salt Lake; I’m not sure. The concert was a little more jazz and little less blues than I would’ve preferred, but it was still an amazing experience to see a legend in the flesh. He was smaller than I expected, and more human. He laughed between songs of wrenching sadness, and he had a way of making a large symphony hall feel like an intimate club, or even someone’s basement rumpus room. You could imagine yourself sharing a beer with this man and feeling better about yourself for having known him.<\/p>\n