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Ray Charles, 73, moving on
Julian Bond once positioned Drowning in My Own Tears as a poem, as an alternative national anthem, actually. Seeing it put that way was an eye opening moment for me. Ray poised the words on a cliff and then folded them gently, painfully into an infinite vortex. "If you dont think/youll be back soon/I guess I'll/drown/in/my/own/tears." Funny connections as the nation mourns and Ray like Regan is carried up Pennsylvania Avenue, decades of Raylettes moaning low. His brother's drowning was one of the few last things he saw [he was not born blind]. Drowning had to move him - and he could handle it both as an idea and as a real thing. His rendition of America now informs all others. Drowning are we on fruited plains of plenty on bad days, in Ray's thrall. What he saw in Hank Snow's Moving On no one saw before. No overstatement: The Genius of Soul.
Related
Ray Charles, 73 - NYT, Jun 1, 2004
Unrelated
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Bloggist Commentary
This is turning into the blog of death - Dash, Charles, Reagan, Elvin Jones, and on and on. Should we call it the Irish Sporting Pages? These are ultimate events. |
BROTHER RAY
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