RAY CHARLES

La singladura vital de Ray Charles (1930-2004) es, sin duda, una de las más extraordinarias de cuantas surcan el panteón de los grandes mitos de la música popular afroamericana. En Brother Ray es el propio artista quien, conversando con David Ritz, desgrana, con su característica y desinhibida energía, la crónica de su peripecia vital. El relato arranca con los trágicos recuerdos de su accidentada infancia, sus primeros tientos profesionales y se centra en el largo y tortuoso camino que recorre hasta su consagración como uno de los grandes de la música popular de todos los tiempos; sin soslayar algunos de los episodios más oscuros de su vida. Una pobreza turbadora, la ceguera, la pérdida de los suyos y el abrasivo e inmisericorde racismo de la época confi eren a la personalidad del artista una serie de rasgos que marcarán el desarrollo de su carrera profesional y la estructura de su carácter.

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."