On 13 September 1985 Ray Charles guested in the music TV show Smokey Robinson's Motown Revue.
He also starred in the big finale, a mash-up of That's What I Want and What'd I Say.
Mediagraphy - Discography - Trackography - Videography - Gigography - Biography - Chronology
The footage below comes from the TV documentary We Are the World - The Story Behind the Song, directed by Tom Trbovich, a behind-the-scenes look at the night of 28 January 1985. The film was released on DVD several times; the best edition is the one with the tagline 20th Anniversary Special Edition; Image Entertainment, 1 February 2005.For instance, participants (they were supposed to check their egos at the door) started getting meddlesome before Ray Charles set everybody straight and told them to just sing the song.
'85 DM World:“When he spoke up, everyone listened,” Oates said [...]. “Everyone stopped. Everyone got on board. It was very cool. And I was standing right behind him. [...] I think he was the only guy that could do it. And, when he did it, it was like ‘the man has spoken’.”
The Ray Charles Video Museum is a research project, documenting live performances by The Genius.
This blog is above all a Mediagraphy. It's also a discography (or, more correctly, a trackography), aggregating all tunes that Ray sang and/or played - including the "canon" of 700 tracks listed on the official Ray Charles website, but also identifying the songs that have never been officially released, and e.g. the recordings of other artists, where Ray backed them on piano. Thirdly, this blog has evolved into a multimedia Chronology (click the years in the panel al the top of this page) of Ray's productive live.
I also try to do some justice to the more than 1,000 great musicians and singers who contributed to Ray's career (1, 2).
The Quotes page lists the wisest, craziest and funniest things that the Genius ever said. If you want to read more about Brother Ray, go here.
The availability of the streaming video and audio content on this blog is constantly under pressure. Some rights owners still think that sharing these videos damages their sales. I'm keeping disfunctional clips as placeholders - to show that the footage exists, and to replace them when new uploads appear on the Web.
The articles in this blog are continuously updated and improved. Your help is more than welcome.