[Marxism] Re: who Americans should mourn-- death of Ray Charles

[DLVinvest@xxxxxx]

I hear you bleeding, Melvin.

Ray's early countrified twang gave that genre a whole new color, and almost
made me like it more than Patsy Cline or Johnny Cash. I've got a whole album
from mid-50s where he sings Nat Cole as good as the King himself. "Hit the road,
Jack" wasn't great but he made it true, like everything else he did; and no
better collr'd greens ever cooked so slow than his version of "Makin' Whoopee"
(you better keep her, I think it's cheaper than...) or the coy duet in "Baby,
It's Cold Outside."  Willy wrote it but Ray even made "Georgia" his own as if
it had seeped up out of the red clay and into him and squeezed out in a tear
of a song;

I wore out the grooves in the Man and his Soul collection and still keep it
around because even the hisses and scratches from drunken all-nighters 35 years
ago still speak to me, especially the wry whine of "Busted" ("cotton is down
to a quarter a pound and I'm busted...  [so he goes to his brother and asks
for help but hears] "...the baby need shoes, and I was just thinkin' of callin'
on you 'cause I'm busted." When he cried more mournfully "mother, I'm down on
my knees...brother, brother, won't you help me please..." anyone with a heart
could feel the pain inside their own empty chest where it had been ripped out.
And you knew precisely because there had been so much pain he was right that
"It's been a long time comin' but I know a change is gonna come..."

That's why it hurt to see him singing "America the Beautfiul" to the
Republican convention as if Reagan was what was meant to "crown thy good with
brotherhood from sea to shining sea." But I figured if he could make even a pig 
like
that cry it might be OK -- you could never tell that grin from a grimace -- so
I preferred to think they had to come to Ray, not the other way around,
because

"other arms reach out to me, other lips smile tenderly, still in peaceful
dreams I see the road leads back to you."

Makes me want to "Drown in My Own Tears." Gonna go find a dark and sullen bar
and dance with a dark and sullen girl or any who will have me so long as that
thigh moves with that slatternly roll back and forth to some Ray on an old
jukebox. I know just the place, too, "cause it's Cryin'Time Again, you're gonna
leave me, I can see that faraway look in your eyes, I can tell by the way you
hold me, darlin', that it won't be long before it's cryin' time....".

Douglas L. Vaughan, Jr.
Investigations
for Print, Film & Electronic Media
3140 W. 32nd Ave.
Denver CO 80211
303-455-9429
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