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."
David Ritz, crítico, periodista y escritor, ganador de un Grammy gracias a su colaboración con la aquí biografiada, y el único escritor galardonado en cuatro ocasiones con el Gleason Music Book Award, obtuvo también el Premio Timothy White ASCAP 2013 por su sobresaliente biografía musical When I Left Home, escrita a cuatro manos con Buddy Guy. Ha colaborado con Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, B.B. King, Etta James y Smokey Robinson. Ritz vive en Los Ángeles con su esposa.