Ray Charles

Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory.

Music’s been around a long time, and there’s going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it’s a big record, that’s the frosting on the cake, but music’s the main meal.

There’s nothing written in the Bible, Old or New testament, that says, If you believe in Me, you ain’t going to have no troubles.

There are many spokes on the wheel of life. First, we’re here to explore new possibilities.

The fact of the matter is, you don’t give up what’s natural. Anything I’ve fantasized about, I’ve done.

Music is my life, professionally, for nearly 60 years. To be recognized by the academy is still the highest honor.

Practice 15 or 20 years and then it comes out spontaneously.

The spirit of Jazz is the spirit of openness.

When I start writing songs and it turns into an overly belabored intellectual process, I just throw it out.

To work is to feel alive.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man and bring tears to the eyes of woman.

It’s part of what the blues does, to write about these things. JB Lenoir was the main one in this regard – he wrote about Korea, too, in fact. Songs that reflect these current situations – in his case, racial issues for the most part: in my case, what has happened to me, and I was in Korea.

Being a singer is a natural gift. It means I’m using to the highest degree possible the gift that God gave me to use. I’m happy with that.

The whites come to applaud a Negro performer just like the colored do. When you’ve got the respect of white and colored, you can ease a lot of things.

We usually never got out of there before four or five o’clock in the morning. Every morning. So it was rough.

I’m surprised Beyonce liked me. I met Beyonce!!

A young tenor player was complaining to me that Coleman Hawkins made him nervous. Man, I told him Hawkins was supposed to make him nervous! Hawkins has been making other sax players nervous for forty years!

However it goes, I’ll just keep playing. That’s where the basic satisfaction is at.

Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument.

You can have tone and technique but without originality you ain’t really nowhere. Gotta be original.

Jazz improvisation is an elusive genius.