An Afternoon with Ray Charles…

Business…this week’s column entry is on Mos Def’s new joint, and a bizarre conclusion I gleaned from it. Enjoy.
Went to see Ray this afternoon. Hmmmph…not sure how I feel about this. Read along as I try to figure this out.

Let’s start with Jamie Foxx’s performance, the one that’s been deemed Oscar-worthy by scribes all over the place, but mostly by the studio pubbing the film. What’s commonly ignored is that Oscar buzz is contrived, usually generated by studios. It’s the same with all those award buzzes, man. They start with the suits and trickle down.
Unfortunately for Jamie, Denzel got the Best Actor Oscar in 2002, meaning the race won’t be due for another until 2042.
But he is really good as Ray Charles, even though he’s hamstrung by an underdeveloped script. We know all movie that Ray is blind, and we know that’s terribly inconvenient, and we know that he overcomes every day. But what isn’t made clear is how much being blind torments him, how the inability to see eats at him all the time, how alone he feels living in the dark. The magnitude of that misery is never made clear, and it really doesn’t seem to be Foxx’s fault. That’s more the fault of the script. Lots of suspect dialogue.
Some will argue that Ray’s pain is made clear by his heroin addiction, but that only paints one side of addiction. Not every addict uses dope to dull the pain of some struggle. Some people just like to get high and get hooked using the wrong dope.
And smack is the wrong dope, one that’s incredibly addictive.
For all we know, he could have been using smack simply because he liked the high. Was that the case? Didn’t appear to be, based on the flick’s ending, but that was always possible. Plus, we had scenes with him using dope and we got to see how he descended into quasi-junkie status, but there was never any sight of struggle in his decisions to shoot up.
The depth of addiction was ignored, and that’s sad when one considers that addiction was the most compelling struggle Ray had to deal with in his life.
Oh, and womanizing…and that’s pretty well-documented in the flick. Not much to say other than this–apparently, he’s better at picking women with no sight than most of my friends are with two good eyes. I need his talent.
Do I need to be blind to really pull? Just maybe…however, it’ll never get that bad. I like colors.
Overall, cool flick…worth a matinee. And if your woman really wants to see it and you really dig her, it’s worth a nighttime feature. It is not, however, worth peeping more than once if you don’t love Ray’s music.
But if you do, go see this joint as many times as you can. One of the more interesting things that came up after Ray’s death was how little many people knew about him. Ask random cats on the street to name five Ray Charles cuts, and they’ll get awfully silent after “Hit the Road, Jack” and “Georgia on My Mind.” Charles is a piece of Americana, but not enough people understand why that’s the case. His ear and gift for interpretation may stand nonpareil in the last sixty years of popular music. Few have ever been as versatile, and even fewer have voices as distinct and emotive as his.
If you’ve never heard Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, go buy it now. If you’re not familiar with his early sides, download them as soon as you can. In fact, go get a greatest hits collection…his stuff has been kinda tough to get online since Napster got shut down. But understand why this man is the architect of what became soul music…the likelihood of coming across another Ray Charles is low.
However, flicks of Ray‘s quality come a dime a dozen.