On April 23, 1985, Coca Cola did the unthinkable: they announced that they were reformulating their soft drink, "
spawning consumer angst the likes of which no business has ever seen".
The night before they invited Ray Charles at the
Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta (
Robert Winship Woodruff was the president of The Coca-Cola Company from 1923 until 1954).
Brother Ray was possibly introduced as a 'friend of the brand' - the guy who had given Coke the fabulous
Things Go Better With Coca Cola radio and TV commercials in the late 1960s.
It's unclear if this was a public event, or an internal party for Coca Cola employees or marketers. In
imperfect harmony with an as yet unidentified* lady singer, Ray performed a questionably weak symphonic version (with a huge choir) of
It's The Real Thing, the Coke campaign's theme song in the mid '80s.
Who knows more about what happened that evening?
* Is it Yolanda Adams?
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