Earlier this year,Nirvanaentered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, making them the first “grunge band” from the Seattle scene to be inducted. As Alice in Chainsprepare to play a show in Cleveland next week, where the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is located, guitarist Jerry Cantrell spoke withCleveland.comabout Nirvana’s induction and more.
“It’s well-deserved,” says Cantrell. “I loved those guys.’’ But the singer-guitarist adds, “I was surprised to see them go in before Pearl Jam. They went in for ‘Bleach,’ which wasn’t a big record till ‘Nevermind’ became a big record.”
However, Cantrell is a bit mistaken in his sentiments. A band becomes eligible 25 years after its first significant recording, and while it’s true that their 1988 single ‘Love Buzz’ and 1989 debut album ‘Bleach’ helped Nirvana become eligible, an act is inducted based on their whole body of work, not just the recording that made them eligible.
Cantrell concedes it would be nice to Alice in Chains be inducted, but, “If even one of our group [of Seattle bands] was considered and inducted, it says a lot for them and, associatively, about our whole city.”
AIC are in the midst of a tour supporting last year’s ‘The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here.’ This leg wraps up May 24 in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The band has also added some August dates, which kick off Aug. 8 in Penticton, British Columbia.
Before those August shows, Cantrell will appear at this year’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp in Las Vegas. He’ll be there along with Stone Temple Pilots guitarist Dean DeLeo and Jane’s Addiction drummer Stephen Perkins. The camp runs July 31-Aug. 3 at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, with a live performance by campers and counselors at the House of Blues to wrap up the festivities.
WITH THE BOEING AIRPLANE COMPANY in the news a lot these days –
mainly because of the firm’s increasing disloyalty to its historic hometown of
Seattle while once-again attempting to extort zillion$ in tax breaks from the
State of Washington, and additional concessions from its workforce (by
threatening to take more work out-of-state) – I figured it was timely to gaze
back and recall happier times. Like, ironically, the Great Depression
when the Boeing Band used to perform for outbound
passengers and spectators alike in free concerts given at Boeing Field’s
airplane terminal. Comprised of musically inclined Boeing pilots (on 4
saxophones, a trumpet, clarinet, tuba, and guitar), the octet was
photographed in
1931 by ACME Newspictures Inc. – and I was lucky enough to unearth this
vintage
photographic print – which was originally distributed with the suggested
caption headline: “There’s Music In The Air.”
Born: Atlanta, Georgia, United States
23 September 1930
Died: Beverly Hills, California, United States
10 June 2004
Activity/Profession: Blues Musician / Singer, Gospel Musician / Singer, Bandleader, Popular Singer, Pianist
(23 Sept. 1930–10 June 2004),
singer, bandleader, and entrepreneur, was born Ray Charles Robinson in Albany, Georgia, the son of Bailey Robinson, a day worker, and Aretha (maiden name unknown). Charles's younger brother and only sibling drowned at age four. By the age of seven Charles had lost his sight to glaucoma and was sent to the State School for the Blind and Deaf in St. Augustine, Florida, where he remained until his mother's death when he was fifteen. It was during his time at the school for the blind, which was segregated by race, that he received formal piano lessons and learned to read braille. After his mother's death, he set out on his own, traveling and working as a musician around Jacksonville, Florida.
Charles's earliest influences as a musician were the jazz and blues pianist Charles Brown and the pianist and singer Nat King Cole. His ability to learn the styles of both musicians allowed him to gain work in clubs where audiences were familiar with their music. Sensing the need to branch out beyond Florida, Charles moved to Seattle, Washington, at the age of eighteen. In Seattle, Charles formed a band, the McSon trio, and made his first recording, his own composition, “Confession Blues,” on the Swing Time label owned by Jack Lauderdale, who encouraged Charles to move to Los Angeles in 1950. In Los Angeles, Charles recorded two more singles for Swing Time before he began to tour nationally with the guitarist Lowell Fulson. Charles eventually became Fulson's musical director. In 1952 Charles signed with the Shaw Agency and began to tour nationally as a solo artist. On the strength of his second single, “Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand,” Charles was signed to a recording contract by Ahmet Ertugen, the founder of Atlantic Records. Charles's first release for the label was “It Should Have Been Me” (1952).
Charles's early recordings with the Atlantic label favored the styles of Charles Brown and Nat Cole—styles that had earned him a minor reputation as a rhythm-and-blues artist. But it was with the single “I've Got a Woman,” backed by “Come Back Baby,” that Charles began to exhibit the innovative style that would become the foundation of soul music. At the core of Charles's innovation was his use of chords and rhythms drawn from black gospel music to write and record music that had distinctly secular themes. “I've Got a Woman,” for example, was based on “Let's Talk about Jesus,” a gospel hit for the Bells of Joy in 1951. Follow-up recordings by Charles, like “A Fool for You” (1955) and “Drown in My Own Tears” (1955), also adhered to Charles's “soul” strategy, but “Hallelujah, I Love Her So” in May of 1956 became his first crossover hit.
Ray Charles crossed musical boundaries and entertained generations of fans. Photographed in 1960. (Library of Congress.)
As Charles's new style became popular, he began to face criticism from black ministers and gospel audiences. The genius of his burgeoning style was his intuitive understanding that the “Saturday night sinner” and the “Sunday morning saved” were often one and the same. The addition of doo-wop girls called the Raeletts accentuated a feeling of call and response, the verbal interaction common between a black minister and his choir. By the time Charles scored with the gospel-frenzied “What'd I Say,” a top-ten pop single in 1959, he had inspired legions of followers, many of whom, likeSam Cooke and Aretha Franklin, went directly from the black church to the pop charts.
Much of Charles's early success was rooted in his ability to master many musical genres, most notably jazz, rhythm and blues, and soul. After Charles and his band made a successful appearance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, Atlantic capitalized on his growing popularity with the recording The Genius of Ray Charles (1959), which included the pop standards “Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying,” “Come Rain or Shine,” “It Had to Be You,” and the big-band romp “Let the Good Times Roll.” The album was the last that Charles recorded for the label, though there were subsequent releases of previously recorded music. In November 1959 Charles signed with ABC-Paramount, which offered a larger advance on future royalties, a higher rate of royalties, and ownership of his own master recordings. Charles had mixed success with his first two singles for ABC-Paramount, but with the third release he achieved his biggest hit-ever.
Hoagy Carmichael's “Georgia on My Mind” (1960) was an old ballad that sentimentally recalls the American South. Charles infused the song with his unique soulful style and in the process made it one of his signature tunes. The song went to number three on the pop charts and earned Charles the first two of twelve Grammy Awards from the National Academy for the Recording Arts and Sciences. The following year Charles achieved his first number-one pop song and another Grammy with Percy Mayfield's “Hit the Road Jack.”
The success of “Georgia on My Mind” signaled a new direction in Charles's recording career. Always fascinated by country-and-western musicians, Charles finally recorded a full-fledged country song, Hank Snow's “I'm Moving On,” toward the end of his tenure at Atlantic. This was followed by Charles's groundbreaking Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music in April 1962. Though ABC-Paramount was fearful that Charles would lose his core fan base, Charles scored his second number-one pop single with “I Can't Stop Loving You.” Despite the label's initial concerns, the song also topped the R&B charts for sixteen weeks. So successful wasModern Sounds in Country and Western Music that Charles released a follow-up in late 1962.Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music 2 included versions of Hank Williams's “Your Cheating Heart” and the popular standby “You Are My Sunshine.”
When Charles released Ingredients in a Recipe for Soul in 1963, it was clear that he had so successfully integrated so many genres into his repertoire that it was no longer possible to label his music simply jazz, soul, or country and western. Ray Charles was becoming widely known as a song stylist, as evidenced by the success of his renditions of tracks like “That Lucky Old Sun” and “Ol’ Man River,” both from Ingredients in a Recipe for Soul, and the singles “Without Love (There Is Nothing)” and “Busted,” a top-five single on both the pop and R&B charts. In 1964 Charles was arrested for drug possession in Boston. He received a five-year suspended sentence, kicked his twenty-year heroin addiction, and miraculously continued his music career unabated. Although taste in popular music changed during the 1960s, with the appearance of Motown and British groups like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, Charles continued to make quality recordings in his own style. He even covered “Yesterday” and “Eleanor Rigby” by the Beatles on his recordings Listen (1967) and A Portrait of Ray (1968). Charles also began to record themes for Hollywood films, the best known being “The Cincinnati Kid” (1965) and “In the Heat of the Night,” the latter from the 1967 film starringSidney Poitier. The film's soundtrack was arranged by Charles's old friend Quincy Jones, whom he had met when he moved to Seattle in 1948. Charles's “Here We Go Again,” released in 1967, was his last major crossover recording until the late 1980s.
Although Charles largely remained on the periphery of the civil rights movement as a recording artist, preferring to provide financial assistance privately, he did offer his political vision on A Message from the People (1972). This album includes versions of Stevie Wonder's “Heaven Help Us All,” James Weldon Johnson's “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (often referred to as the “Negro National Anthem”), and Dick Holler's “Abraham, Martin and John.” The recording also features a stirring version of “America the Beautiful” that was re-released as a single in 1976 to coincide with the U.S. bicentennial celebration. Charles also earned a Grammy Award in 1975 for his rendition of Wonder's politically charged “Living for the City.”
Charles recorded regularly with little fanfare throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, though he was feted with awards and acknowledgements. In 1981 he was awarded a star on the Hollywood Boulevard “Walk of Fame.” He was among the first inductees into the Rock Hall of Fame in 1986, and in 1979 the state of Georgia declared his version of “Georgia on My Mind” the official state song. Charles released his autobiography Brother Ray, written with David Ritz, in 1978. He had a bit of a renaissance in the mid-1980s, making popular recordings with the country artists Willie Nelson (“Seven Spanish Angels”), George Jones (“We Didn't See a Thing”), and Hank Williams Jr. (“Two Old Cats like Us”). In 1989 he teamed again with Quincy Jones to record “I'll Be Good to You,” with Chaka Khan. The song reached number one on the R&B charts. Charles earned his twelfth Grammy Award in 1993 for “A Song for You.” Popular cameos on Sesame Street and commercial endorsements for Pepsi Cola kept his music and image firmly embedded in the minds of generations of Americans.
Ray Charles was married twice and had nine children, but his music always took precedence over all other activities. He died of liver disease on 10 June 2004 and was buried in Inglewood Cemetery, Inglewood, California. Throughout his career Charles maintained an intense touring schedule, not simply for the economic benefit but also to bring various styles of black music to audiences that may have otherwise remained unfamiliar with them. Charles's influence on American popular music has perhaps been rivaled only by figures like Duke Ellington, B. B.King, and James Brown, all of whom toured well into their sixties and seventies, each holding up the banner for the particular brand of popular music he is best known for. Charles's remarkable ability to draw from many styles of popular music made it possible for him to cross—and thereby diminish—musical, racial, political, and geographical barriers.
Further Reading
Charles, Ray, with David Ritz. Brother Ray (1978).
Lydon, Michael. Ray Charles: Man and Music (1998)
Wexler, Jerry, and David Ritz. Rhythm and Blues: A Life in American Music (1993).
Earlier this year, Nirvana entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, making them the first “grunge band” from the Seattle scene to be inducted. As Alice in Chains prepare to play a show in Cleveland next week, where the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is located, guitarist Jerry Cantrell spoke with Cleveland.com about Nirvana’s induction and more..jpg)
