Brother Ray: Ray Charles' Own Story [Paperback] Review

Warning!: if people are honest you might hear some things you'd rather not read. In this case however, it does mean that through Ray Charles' own words we hear about his life up till 1978 when the book came out.

His youth was hard, becoming blind around age 7, going to a special school and losing his mom when she was only in her thirties were hard. Music is of course the theme that runs through it all, though I personally would have liked to have read more about the musical side of his life than the two things that make up an important part of the book: heroin and sex.

He seems to have been addicted to both but he has always said that heroin was his own choice and that he wasn't pushed into it by other people. That makes it all very openhearted and in a way bearable. The part where he decided to stop smack is heartbreaking and genuine.

He also talks lightly about his blindness, which is great, you forget most of the time that he couldn't see a thing.

The ghostwriter himself has carefully written that Ray himself went over the pages time and time again so we can be pretty sure that everything in it is true to his heart.

We could have done with some more musical history, but it's a great book to read nonetheless

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Product Description:
Ray Charles (1930-2004) led one of the most extraordinary lives of any popular musician. In Brother Ray, he tells his story in an inimitable and unsparing voice, from the chronicle of his musical development to his heroin addiction to his tangled romantic life.Overcoming poverty, blindness, the loss of his parents, and the pervasive racism of the era, Ray Charles was acclaimed worldwide as a genius by the age of thirty-two. By combining the influences of gospel, jazz, blues, and country music, he invented, almost single-handedly, what became known as soul. And throughout a career spanning more than a half century, Ray Charles remained in complete control of his life and his music, allowing nobody to tell him what he could and couldn't do. As the Chicago Sun-Times put it, Brother Ray is "candid, explicit, sometimes embarrassing, often hilarious, always warm, touching, and deeply human-just like his music."

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Ray Charles: Man and Music, Updated Commemorative Edition [Paperback] Review

Now in a newly updated edition from Routledge, Ray Charles: Man And Music by Michael Lydon ("Rolling Stone" founding editor and an influential music journalist) presents and documents the live and contributions to contemporary American music by Rhythm & Blues singer and musician Ray Charles. Afflicted with blindness at an early age, suffering the loss of his family at fourteen, Ray Charles went on to become one of the best known and best liked American music performers. This outstanding biography doesn't flinch from Charles struggle with heroin addiction or his problematic career at Atlantic Records. Originally published in 1995, this new edition now includes chapters on the last seven years of his life making Ray Charles: Man And Music very strongly recommended reading for anyone who has enjoyed his music and admired his ultimate triumph over adversity.

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