Playboy Interview: Ray Charles

Ray Charles has been an international institution for so long that only a handful of those under 30 can remember when the singer-instrumentalist-band-leader-businessman wasn't looming over the music scene in such outsized dimensions as to appear more myth than man. By any measure the dean of the current soul movement, Charles has the ability to reduce the diverse idioms of blues, country-and-western, jazz, rhythm-and-blues and rock to an emotional common denominator that overcomes barriers of language and culture around the world. Frank Sinatra--voicing the almost unanimous sentiments of Ray's colleagues--calls him "the giant of our profession."

In recognition of his indispensability to any consideration of American music, Charles was featured last year in a three-hour segment of the 48-hour RKO radio network special "A History of Rock 'n' Roll." Former U. S. Representative Charles S. Joelson praised the sightless soul singer from the floor of the U. S. Congress for his "inner eye," and added, "He can see more deeply than many of us who lack his sensitivity." Not long ago, the government of France struck a bronze medallion and presented it to him on behalf of the French people; his bust also occupies a place of honor in The Playboy Jazz & Pop Hall of Fame. He has been asked to preside as the honorary chairman for life of the Rhythm-and-Blues Hall of Fame, and to sing one of the songs nominated for an Oscar at this year's Academy Awards ceremonies.

In 1967, Los Angeles city councilman Thomas Bradley's motion to honor the singer's 20th anniversary in the music business was overwhelmingly approved by the city government, and on June 8th, Los Angeles observed a city-wide Ray Charles Day. The following year, besides adding three more gold albums--the certification that a recording artist has sold 1,000,000 or more copies of an LP--to his already abundant harvest, he costarred with "soul sister number one," Aretha Franklin, in a prize-winning series of commercials for Coca-Cola, and headlined a number of television specials. Charles's video exposure was even more frequent last year. He made appearances on the Glen Campbell, Andy Williams, Smothers Brothers, Joey Bishop and Merv Griffin shows.

Now 39, Charles shrewdly began reaping more profits from his talents than his performances alone could bring when, in 1962, he formed his own recording company, Tangerine Records, and became the firm's president and technical advisor. Early in 1969, he announced plans to broaden even further the scope of his entertainment empire, now grown to multimillion-dollar proportions, with the addition to Tangerine of two music-publishing firms, a property-management company and a talent-management branch that presently nurtures the gifts of more than 20 promising young acts. All of the entertainer's business operations are housed under one roof: the Charles-owned R. P. M. International Building in Los Angeles.

But Charles spends far more time on the road than at home--traveling in his personal Viscount with the large Ray Charles Revue, consisting of an all-girl quartet called the Raeletts, a 17-piece orchestra, several other acts and two stage non-musician assistants, plus a valet and his longtime friend and business manager, Joe Adams. His itinerary may take him to as many as 40 states and 30 foreign countries each year. Charles also owns a smaller plane that he uses for short hops and pleasure flying, all of which--he hastens to assure those who might believe the rumor that he's at the controls--is done by his pilot. He is, however, justly proud of his self-sufficiency and disdains dependence of any kind. He "watches" television and live sporting events, in addition to making repairs on many machines and electronic appliances around his home and office. He also possesses an intuitive sense of the difference between day and night. "I can hear better when it gets dark," he claims.

Charles's blindness and blackness are but two of the factors responsible for the extraordinary pathos of his voice. Another measure of the authenticity of its pain-drenched timbre is the fact that, for 19 years of his life, Charles was a heroin addict. After several brushes arid a couple of outright confrontations with the law--the last of which took place in Boston in 1965--Charles voluntarily entered St. Francis Hospital in Lynwood, California, in August of that year. After a three-month recuperation period, during which he underwent medical and psychiatric help in defeating his habit, the unsinkable entertainer took a year's rest. Then he announced the formation of a new revue in early 1966. Instantly, he was back in his familiar position in the world of showbiz: at the top. No one has ever paid higher dues to get there.

Born the first son of Bailey and Aretha Robinson on September 23, 1930, in Albany, Georgia, Ray Charles Robinson spent his early years with all his faculties intact. His introduction to music by a neighbor and the tragedy of his younger brother's death are two of his memories of important events from, his sighted years. Shortly after his sixth birthday, an eye disease--which doctors subsequently diagnosed as glaucoma--gradually claimed his sight. A year later, irrevocable darkness surrounded the youngster and his parents had to enroll him at a school for the blind in St. Augustine, Florida. It was there that "Fools," as Ray was called by his schoolmates for his shoeless arrival at the school, gathered whatever formal music education he would receive--which was apparently sufficient; he learned to read and write music in braille and to play almost every instrument in the school band. Early in 1969, he returned briefly to his alma mater to be honored as its most outstanding alumnus.

It wasn't until he reached the age of ten, the year his father died, that Ray felt the full impact of being black in the United States: "A little white guy I was playing with at school happened to call me 'nigger.' Before the incident, I really didn't know exactly what the word meant, but I got so mad when I heard it that I just picked him up like a sack of flour and dropped him flat. They made me wash dishes with the girls for two weeks as punishment." Five years later, his mother, who had been his source of strength through all previous hardships, also died. Alone with his music, Ray quit school and alternated for a lime between semi-starvation and occasional gigs with local jazz groups in the Georgia-Florida area. "Times and me got leaner and leaner," he recalls, "but anything beat getting a cane and a cup and picking out a street corner."

At 17, determined to get "as far away from where I was as possible"--and apparently from who he was, since he had by then shortened his name, to avoid being mistaken for Sugar Ray Robinson, the boxer--Charles look $600 he had saved from intermittent jobs and journeyed to Seattle. Soon after he arrived in town, he decided to cut a record--and found himself promptly fined heavily for violating a recording ban imposed by music-union czar James Petrillo during a long musicians' strike. "Everybody was cutting records then," Charles says resignedly. "Only I didn't know you were supposed to lie about it." Side one of that unfortunate disc was appropriately titled "Confession Blues."

When the strike was over, work came quickly for a while, with the singer-instrumentalist imitating a number of then-successful performers, until it occurred to him that Ray Charles might have something uniquely valuable of his own to offer. So he began to do his own inimitable thing, and for the next few years--though he would have been an admirable addition to anyone's band at the prices for which he was willing to work--jobs were sporadic and second-rate. He toured for a year with Lowell Fulson's blues band and later formed a combo to back vocalist Ruth Brown. Then he did an unnoticed single at Harlem's Apollo Theater. Back in Seattle, things began to pick up when the Maxim Trio, a group he put together in 1953, became the first black act to get its own sponsored television show in the Pacific Northwest. Returning to the club circuit after the show folded, he was frustrated by the quality of musicianship he found among the various pickup groups with which he had to work, and he formed a permanent septet for roadwork. With this group, in 1954, Charles waxed his first national hit, "I Got a Woman," which critic Nat Hentoff described as "secularized Gospel."

From that point on, Charles produced a nearly unbroken string of hits; and when he changed record companies in 1959, his popularity went into even higher orbit with his recording of the venerable "Georgia on My Mind." Two years later, with financial rewards rolling in, he won the first of five consecutive awards as top male vocalist in Down Beat's International Jazz Critics' Poll. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences gave him the first of several of its highly respected Grammy Awards that same year. And in 1962, Charles recorded the iconoclastic LP "Modern Sounds in Country and Western," which appeared to mixed critical acclaim but solid financial returns. The album also earned him another gold record, and one of the singles therefrom--"I Can't Stop Lovin' You"--has sold over 3,000,000 copies to date. Insisting on excellence from all about him, he continues to record the kind of material that wins new friends and keeps the old ones.

Though he might not qualify as a militant, Charles has very definite opinions on civil rights and contributes to the betterment of race relations in the manner he knows best: through his art. His primary charitable preoccupation is the Sickle Cell Disease Research Foundation, of which the singer was made national honorary chairman three years ago. Sickle-cell disease is a form of anemia, 90 percent of whose victims are black children.

When not, at the mercy of his hectic schedule, Charles can usually be found at home in his $300,000 house, with its grand piano--shaped swimming pool, in the View Park section of Los Angeles.

There, with his second wife, Delia, to whom he has been married for the past 16 years, and his sons, Ray, Jr., 15, David, 13, and Robert, 10, Charles is able to steal a little relaxation. His home away from home, however, is the R. P. M. Building, where, in a normally cyclonic day, he might put in up to 14 hours recording both sides of a single or three tracks of an album and editing as many or more, auditioning a prospective newcomer or two to the ranks of the talent his firm manages, ironing out a few scores with their arrangers and tying together the loose ends of management on all levels, in addition to greeting a dozen or more old friends. It was in his plush office, walled in black cork, that Playboy Assistant Editor Bill Quinn caught Charles between moves--often enough and long enough to complete the following interview.

[Q] Playboy: You were one of the first singers in what music critic Barbara Gardner once called the "natural Negro idiom" to gain wide acceptance among black and white audiences alike. How do you explain this broad appeal?

[A] Charles: For the real answer to that question, you'd have to ask the people who buy my records and come to my shows--the black people and the white people. All I can say is that I'm sincere in my work; I give it all I've got. But I'm not saying that's the answer, either, because lots of performers are just as earnest as I am, maybe more so, and luck has it that they've never made it. Who knows why? I guess my emotions have a lot to do with the way my songs come out. Some nights I sing the blues and I'm under control. Other nights I sing the same songs and I can hardly keep the tears from rolling down my face. I just try never to be mechanical about what I'm doing and I try not to shortchange my audiences--whether I'm playing to 100 people or 100,000.

[Q] Playboy: Your fans obviously go for that approach, because to many of them, you're known as "The Genius." Frank Sinatra even went as far as to call you the "only genius in the business."

[A] Charles: Yeah, Frank did say that. Although I really appreciate the nice names people call me--especially since, in this business, I'm bound to get called a few dirty ones, too--I'm kind of scared of that label. Genius means the top of the heap, which, if a guy doesn't watch himself, can also mean in a rut.

[Q] Playboy: You're also known as "the genius of soul." Since the word soul has so many interpretations, what's yours?

[A] Charles: It's got different strokes for different folks. To me, when you're talking about people with soul, you're talking about warm, understanding, down-to-earth people that do things from the heart. If you're talking about a soulful relationship with a member of the opposite sex, that means one that's genuine, for real. It's when nobody's faking nothing--when you're truly communicating with your partner. If you're talking about soul food, you're talking about the kind of food I love: neck bones, knuckles, collard greens, black-eyed peas and chitterlings. They're mostly foods that became popular during slavery and the Depression, when black people had to make a little bit go a long way. Many of us still have to do that, but nowadays, people all over have found out how good it is; even Lyndon Johnson eats some of it. I don't know if he's soulful enough for chitterlings yet, but he knows all about ham hocks and collards.

[Q] Playboy: You're often quoted as saying that you "want people to feel my soul." Why this great urge to open your innermost self to your audiences--people who are strangers?

[A] Charles: I love this business I'm in; it's like a hobby that I happen to get paid for. Besides, my mother always told me to be as sincere as I can be at whatever I'm doing in life--whether it's shining other folks' shoes, emptying other folks' garbage or singing other folks' troubles away. After all, the other name of this game is the communications business. I've got to be able to reach the public--to make them feel that the girl I'm singing about really did take all my money and run off with my best friend last night--or I won't be around long as a performer. The way I seem to communicate best is through sad songs, because when people are sad--which is most of the time--they want to hear something that compounds that sadness, something that makes 'em cry that much more. Then, when they've got it all out of their systems, they can go through the rest of the day fine. That's why so many people have leaned on the blues over all these years. The blues won't go out of style until people stop hurting each other. But certain blues singers go out of style quick if the public doesn't believe they really know what pain is all about.

[Q] Playboy: Today, in what might be called the post-Beatle era, many white groups have gone in for full-blooded adaptations of blues styles--the Muddy Waters--B. B. King--Howlin' Wolf approach--coupled with an abundance of electronic amplification. What about that blend?

[A] Charles: White kids will never feel about Muddy or B. B. the way they feel about the Rolling Stones or Blood, Sweat & Tears. They've got to have entertainers from their own race to idolize, it seems. Negroes have been singing rhythm-and-blues, or soul music, as it's called now, more or less as you hear it today, since before I was born. But white mothers weren't going to let their daughters swoon over those black cats, so they never got widely known. Then along came Elvis Presley and the white kids had a hero. All that talk about rock 'n' roll began then, but black musicians started to get a little play, too. When the English boys came on the scene, they admitted where they got their inspiration and that caused even more interest in the real blues. I'm glad to see these youngsters doing our music. It enhances the guys who originated it, the same as one of those symphony orchestras enhances Beethoven.

[Q] Playboy: Then you view the current interest in soul among whites as a healthy phenomenon, instead of a case of cultural robbery, as some black and white critics have claimed?

[A] Charles: Just because Bell invented the telephone is no reason to say Ray Charles can't use it. It's ridiculous to have certain music for certain races. I've heard some people say that the big production about soul is just another one of the white man's second-story jobs, but there certainly are many more black artists being heard on white stations today who weren't there a few years ago--and their music is being played just the way they play it. I mean that these white station--some of them are top-40 and some are called underground stations--are playing the real blues, with no water in the whiskey. This makes for understanding, and the more of it we can get between people--I don't care if it's through music, sports or what, as long as people can get together and realize that so-and-so is not such a bastard after all--the better off we'll all be.

[Q] Playboy: But why, since soul has been around all these years, is it suddenly so popular with whites?

[A] Charles: For the same reasons people are so willing to discuss venereal disease and birth control and abortion. If any group is responsible, it's the kids; they're not buying the old stories they were told by their parents. They're beginning to want to do things and find things out for themselves and, as a result, they're experimenting with all the old taboos. White people in the South used to tell their kids that the blues was the Devil's music. They said that anybody who listened to it would go to hell. Then, along comes this big communications system and the white kids heard some of those devilish "race records" down there at the far end of the radio dial. They liked what they heard and they're still around, so they aren't going for the old stories anymore.

[A] I guess they also realize that rhythm-and-blues and jazz are the only really American music there is. The average white guy can't talk about classical music or opera--unless he just got off the boat from Italy or Germany or somewhere like that. For all of us, black and white, the only music we can call our own is what's being made here. I guess whites aren't going to let black people keep a monopoly on it any longer.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that the musical forms now identified with blacks, as well as those of country-and-western and such exotic influences as the Greek and East Indian, will eventually merge to produce a single American sound?

[A] Charles: They might, but there'll still be differences--according to who's singing. You're not going to find a whole lot of whites who can sing like Muddy Waters. You may find one or two who come close--come to think of it, I've heard one or two lately--but, generally speaking, there'll always be that little difference.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying that whites can't really sing the blues?

[A] Charles: I didn't say that; they tell me that anything's possible. I only say that I've never heard a white singer who can sing the blues effectively--the way, say, that Aretha Franklin sings them. But who knows--tomorrow, maybe somebody will come along. After all, the blues is mainly music about people's troubles, and everybody's entitled to a few of those; it's the degree of trouble that makes the difference. If the blues ever really gets sung by a white person, it'll be the Jew that does it. I think they've had a history very similar to the black man's: They've been persecuted all over the world and they've known what it is to be somebody else's footstool.

[Q] Playboy: Accepting your argument that environment and personal experiences determine one's artistic validity, how do you justify yourself--a black man--as a country-and-western singer?

[A] Charles: What I did was take country-and-western songs and sing them my way. In other words, I didn't try to imitate Hank Snow or Grandpa Jones. I did the same thing with songs like Georgia, which has been around for over 30 years. I think there's a vast difference between putting your thing on a song and trying to be a certain kind of singer. Whatever the song, jazz or country-and-western, it's got to sound like I did it or I'm not going to release it.

[Q] Playboy: Were you aware at the time you cut your country-and-western albums that a number of purists among your fans objected to your venturing into that area?

[A] Charles: I've been listening to Grand Ole Opry since I was eight or nine years old, and I happen to dig it. But the main reason I did these hillbilly tunes was that there are millions of everyday people who listen to this music--not just in the States but in Europe and Asia, too. Country-and-western, to my mind, is a very sincere form of music, just like the blues. It's the kind of music that you don't go to school to learn to play; you've either got it in your soul or you haven't--just like the blues. It's not prettied up or glossed over, and it's about poor people and dirt farmers and all the little folks who are having a tough time of it just staying alive--exactly like the blues. Those hillbilly tunes, the real ones, get right down to earth; they talk about being flat-out drunk in some bar or feeling guilty about screwing your neighbor's wife. It's the nitty-gritty; it's just about poor whites instead of poor blacks, that's all.

[Q] Playboy: But there is a difference in cultural environment between the groups.

[A] Charles: Of course there is. Just looking at a white guy living in the hills of Kentucky, you might say: "He lives in a tar-paper shack, not enough to eat and raggedy clothes on his back, just like the black man; he's in poverty, just like the black man." But if you come to that conclusion, I must say to you that the hillbilly man can go anywhere he wants to; he can do anything he wants to; he doesn't have any restrictions against him whatsoever; he can even live in a black ghetto if he wants to. But it takes ten housing laws and 30 tanks for a black man to get into some of these white suburbs. Americans love to say they hate communism, but a Russian can come over here and get better treatment than a black American citizen. And, Christ, don't let me forget the real American: the red man. Yeah, it'll be Jews, or maybe Indians, who sing the blues first after us, because that poor hillbilly either likes the way he lives--and that's perfectly all right with me--or he's just too damn lazy to make something of himself. The blues isn't about choosing to be in poverty.

[Q] Playboy: How do you account for white girl singers, such as Janis Joplin and Grace Slick, who sing earthier, more bluesy material than many of their black counterparts, such as Shirley Bassey and Leslie Uggams?

[A] Charles: Back in the Thirties, you had white girls who sang like that, too; they were called red-hot mommas. But you could still tell the difference between Sophie Tucker and Bessie Smith. And you still can.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you think the top black female vocalists, such as Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae and Nancy Wilson, have been striving over the past generation for a more "legitimate" sound than the Bessie Smiths, Ma Raineys, Billie Holidays, Nellie Lutchers and Dinah Washingtons had?

[A] Charles: I'd say that singers like Carmen and Ella and Sarah are trying to get to as many people as they can--and not just for the sake of money, either. When the President makes a speech, he wants to speak to all Americans. These girls obviously reach more people than they would if they only sang blues. I sing more than one way for the same reason.

[Q] Playboy: Then you don't think--as some old blues men told Charles Keil in his book Urban Blues--that there aren't any more great black female blues singers because "black women don't have anything to be blue about anymore"?

[A] Charles: Black women have just as much trouble, just as much pain as they ever had. Times haven't changed in that respect. And we still have women blues singers, modern blues singers like Aretha, who in my book is the best girl singer around--I don't care what color. There are singers that know more music, maybe, but--talking about bringing it up from the heart--there's nobody can do it the way she does. In time, she'll probably be as great a legend as Bessie Smith or Billie Holiday. After all, how many Billies or Bessies are you going to have in one lifetime?

[Q] Playboy: You have recorded only one LP with a female singer, Ray Charles and Betty Carter. Do you think we'll hear a Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin album in the near future?

[A] Charles: Well, as close as we've come so far are the Coke commercials we did a while ago. I'd love to get together with her, but she's under contract to another record company and I doubt if it's possible any time soon without a big hassle.

[Q] Playboy: Why is it that there are just as many great male blues singers today as there ever were?

[A] Charles: Well, the majority of all records sold--blues or not--are made by males, because women buy more records than men. Not only that; women make their men go out and get the records that they want to hear. Naturally, these records are made by men. On top of that, a young guy may go out and buy a record by a male singer because he's a little shy and that singer is saying exactly what he'd like to say to his girl but doesn't know how. This business is geared to male singers all the way around.

[Q] Playboy: A moment ago, you observed a parallel between Jews and blacks. That seems ironic, in view of the reported upsurge of anti-Semitism in the black areas of America's cities.

[A] Charles: Yes, I know that some black people are saying the Jew has been in our communities, sapping us of this and stealing that. But, hell, I know some black people in those same communities who have been sapping and stealing from black folks as fast as that Jew. One of the white man's faults has been that he's been too quick to condemn my whole race. Now, if black people turn right around and say that all Jews are thieves and crooks, we're just as wrong as the white man, and it might as well be dog eat dog. I say this: If black folks find a Jew in their community who's not giving them a fair shake, they should throw his ass out. While they're at it, they might also kick out those Negroes who're overcharging and short-weighting them. This can be clone by just not patronizing them; they'll soon have to close up. Frankly, I must say that Jews have been some of the black man's biggest supporters in this country, so I can't see spitting on a helping hand. Besides that, the black man could stand to take a page or two out of the Jews' book by sticking together and helping one's own.

[Q] Playboy: Speaking of helping one's own, what do you do for the black cause?

[A] Charles: Well, since I'm limited in some ways--like, on a picket line, I'd have a little trouble knowing when to duck the billy clubs and the bricks--I operate mostly in a fund-raising capacity. Let's face it; I don't care what project you come up with, it takes money to put it over. We usually do benefit concerts for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and small Negro colleges and other groups we think are doing a good job, but we don't do free benefits. We ask whoever we're doing the show for to pay us, just like any other commercial promoters have to. Then we give them back all or part of the check, depending on what we want to do. We've found that whoever's in charge of the program will do a better job of hustling tickets and getting an audience together if they have to pay us first. If I'm going to do a benefit, I want the people I'm doing it for to work hard, if not harder, than if it was a commercial thing, because I'm not working for me, I'm working for them and, hell, I can stay home and make nothing. The only time we don't ask for money ahead of time is when we're doing concerts for guys in the Service.

[Q] Playboy: During a television appearance not long ago, you remarked that you were going to stop performing in places like the Cocoanut Grove and do shows only in black neighborhoods, if your people "need it." Would such a move have any practical value?

[A] Charles: Actually, when I made that statement, I was answering those people who think that putting Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald or Ray Charles on TV or in some big night clubs is enough to make the average black man in the street without a job jump for joy and say, "All is well in America for me." Before I'd help put over that kind of sham, I'd just as soon go back to playing roadhouses and barbecue joints. Window dressing ain't enough; America's got to clean house.

[Q] Playboy: Where do you think the cleaning ought to start?

[A] Charles: First of all, I must say that, with all its faults, this is the best country in the world--bar none--in my book. But I just wonder why this Government doesn't give food instead of tanks and jet planes to little countries with starving people in them; hungry babies can't eat machine guns. I wonder why a country as powerful and rich as this one has people starving to death right here, for that matter. These are some of the first problems to work on. But, you know, when the Government finally does get to working out problems, it sometimes overdoes it a little, too.

[Q] Playboy: Do you mean in such areas as welfare subsidy?

[A] Charles: Let me put it this way: A lot of times, when the United States goes to help little countries, it says, "We're going to build you all the roads you need; whatever you need, we're going to put it there for you." But then it adds, "The only thing you have to do now is stick with us and do what we want." That's the kind of welfare I see going on here, too. My definition of welfare is: "John, you say you need some money. Well, I'm going to give you that money--$400, $500, $1000--whatever you need. Only I'm giving it to you for a month or a year, or however long you say you need it. Just like I have a responsibility to see that you get a break, you have a responsibility to me as a citizen to pay it back on time. You have to honor your responsibility, because I let you use your fellow citizens' money, the people who are slaving every day and paying taxes." Now, John wants to know how the hell he's going to pay me back, when he wouldn't have borrowed the money in the first place, if he had any to pay me back with. "Well, John, while you've got the taxpayers' money, I'm going to put you through this training school I've got. And since I'm the U. S. Government, I've got courses in whatever you want to study--bricklaying or medicine. While you're there, John, I'm going to pay you some money, so that your family doesn't starve while you're learning. After you've learned your trade and once I place you in a job, that front money I loaned you must be paid back to the Government--a little at a time--until every nickel is returned to my cash register." That way, John has his dignity and the Government gets a return on its investment.

[A] Now, I can hear people saying, "Aw, Ray, you talk like that 'cause you've got it made." Bullshit. Twice in my life, I almost died of malnutrition. I've eaten sardines and crackers many, many times. Some days I didn't eat at all; I drank water and shut the hell up about it. When I was able to get a job and get my hands on two or three bucks, I cherished it and I watched how I spent it. I'm not saying I wouldn't have taken a fin from some candy man who just walked up and handed it to me, but when I had to go through hell to get that five, believe me, I was careful how I spread it around. I don't think the black man--or any person who's in need, for that matter--really wants handouts. I believe that the majority of people, first of all, have their pride. Second, I think they want to be able to get a real job with some meaning, raise their families and keep the Government's nose out of the picture.

[Q] Playboy: It's been said that the Government keeps its nose too far out of the picture, on occasion, by too infrequently involving this nation's jazz and blues artists in its State Department-sponsored cultural tours. A few of the musicians who have been on these junkets have complained about their loose management by State Department personnel. All this, critics claim, adds up to a lack of Government support and respect for the black musician. How do you feel about it?

[A] Charles: I'm not sure that this Government has enough respect for anybody--black or white, musician or not--especially when it comes to drafting people and collecting taxes. As a rule, though, the kind of people who work for the State Department probably feel that the blues is beneath them. They wouldn't be caught dead listening to Little Milton or Howlin' Wolf. They don't even know these cats exist, so they couldn't be expected to ask them to go on tours. To the people in Washington, all this music--maybe with the exception of traditional jazz players like Louis Armstrong--is somehow in bad taste. But you know, two thirds of the world is playing it and dancing to it, so I guess there's a hell of a lot of people with bad judgment, wouldn't you say? Those officials kind of remind me of the guy I heard on television asking what "those black people" are raising all that hell about. He was one of those whites who thought we always seemed "satisfied" 'cause we're always "laughing and singing and dancing." Some of these State Department cats seem to feel the same way about it--and people wonder why the world's in such rough shape.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever been asked to go on one of the department's tours?

[A] Charles: No, but I'd like to go to Russia. This has nothing to do with the State Department; I'd just like to go there, anyway. I've been interviewed by Russian reporters and they said they'd try to work out an arrangement for me to give a few concerts, whenever I'm ready to go. They say I've got lots of fans over there. I also get many letters from countries like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. So far, though, I haven't heard anything from the State Department. I don't think they know about me any more than they know about Little Milton. But if they did ask me to go somewhere--which they won't after they read this--I think my first choice, if I got a choice, would be Vietnam.

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel about U. S. intervention in that conflict?

[A] Charles: I'm not much different from most sane folks. I wish we'd just get the hell out of there. Since I'm not in danger of being sent there with a gun, maybe I'm not the one to talk. But I'm not a violent man; I don't dig war and I don't like to see people knocking each other off. Every man has a right to life. People say that America has certain commitments to Vietnam, and she does. But if I tell you I'm going to help you, then I figure you're going to put forth most of the effort and I'm going to play a supporting role--not carry both of us. Don't ask me to draft my 18-year-olds when lots of your 19-year-olds aren't in uniform. Another thing I disagree with is this bit about "Today is Christmas, so I'm not going to kill your son today--I'll kill him tomorrow, after the holiday is over." If you have to fight a war, fight it to win. Otherwise, get out. There's never even been a declaration of war in this thing. So if it's not even officially supposed to be a war, what're all these kids dying for? There's something awfully rotten with that whole half-ass thing over there.

[Q] Playboy: A number of entertainers refuse to participate in U. S. O. tours of Vietnam, because they feel that supporting the morale of U. S. troops would signify approval of the war. Apparently, you don't feel that strongly about it.

[A] Charles: If a soldier goes into one of those towns over there and spends a few bucks buying himself a woman, he's getting entertained right there. Now, ten to one, he feels less like going out and killing people after a little sport. It's when people feel like nobody gives a damn what happens to them that they can work up hatred and cruelty quick. Those soldiers deserve a few moments of pleasure, 'cause they're catching hell for the rest of us, whether they like it or not. I want to give them anything I can.

[Q] Playboy: A decade ago, young people were far less demonstrative about their concern for the state of the world than today's activist generation is. Have you modified your material or your style in any way to reflect the current social and political mood?

[A] Charles: I'd have to agree that the majority of people who come to my concerts nowadays are probably more aware of world affairs than they were a few years ago, but I doubt seriously if they want to hear me make speeches about the Democrats or the Republicans. When I go to buy a pair of shoes, I give less than a damn whether the salesman voted for Humphrey or Nixon; all I want is a pair of kicks that don't hurt my feet. The same is probably true of my audiences; they've spent their hard-earned money to get a few minutes' entertainment out of life and that's that.

[Q] Playboy: But an increasing number of performers are infusing their material with political issues. Such diverse show people as Joan Baez, Mort Sahl, Dick Gregory, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Archie Shepp are cases in point. Shepp, a black tenor saxophonist, even reads his poetry and various other declarations of militancy during his performances.

[A] Charles: I haven't seen the gentleman you're talking about, so it's difficult for me to comment on his approach. But if his talking doesn't bug his public, then it's fine with me. Personally, I think everyone can see that I'm black, so I guess I don't have to tell anybody about it. Furthermore, I'd like to think that when I sing a song, I can let you know all about the heartbreak, struggle, lies and kicks in the ass I've gotten over the years for being black and everything else, without actually saying a word about it.

[Q] Playboy: Nancy Wilson has recorded a tune called Black Is Beautiful. Aretha Franklin's version of Otis Redding's Respect and James Brown's I'm Black and I'm Proud have become anthems of America's central cities. Do you think it would be overstating your case to cut such a number yourself?

[A] Charles: That question reminds me of the sign I saw in a gas station once: Please Engage Brain Before Shifting Mouth. Now, I'm not knocking any of the singers you just mentioned, but long before any of them cut those songs, I had a record called You're In for a Big Surprise. The lyrics went: "I call you 'Mister' / I shine your shoes / You go 'way laughing / While I sing the blues. / You think I'm funny / And you're so wise / But, a-a-a-ah, baby, / You're in for a big surprise."

[Q] Playboy: But despite such atypical songs, some critics have charged that your singing approach is a formula that you could alter only at the risk of losing your audiences. Do you think there is any element of your style that's essential to your continued popularity?

[A] Charles: Yeah: me. I must always be myself; and, by the way, it's the easiest thing in the world for me to do.

[Q] Playboy: Many other singers seem to find it expedient, if not easy, to "be you." Are you flattered by the attempts to duplicate your vocal style, or do you feel your imitators are cutting in on your market?

[A] Charles: They aren't cutting in on my market at all. I don't care how well they imitate me; they can't imitate my insides. They can't do what I would do with a song till after I've done it--so they always have to follow. There's not one imitation that ever became as popular as the original. I guess I'm flattered, because those people out there are trying to make a living and if they think the best way to do it is to sound like me--fine.

[Q] Playboy: Who were the influences on your sound?

[A] Charles: I guess the first would be Nat Cole. When I was still a kid, 18 or 19, I cut a few 78s with my trio that would show you today that I tried to sing like him as much as possible. Then, too, I tried to sound like Charles Brown, who might not be so popular today, but when he led the Three Blazers in the Forties, he was one of the hottest names going. Art Tatum wasn't a singer, and my piano doesn't sound much like his, but he was also one of my biggest influences. He was, in my opinion, the greatest pianist--and one of the greatest human beings--who ever lived. Those people who talk about making the black man aware of his history should start a television series on those really great old musicians who are just about forgotten now, like Tatum, Kid Ory, King Oliver. I don't care whose favorites you pick, they were all pioneers.

[A] Some of the other people who've contributed to my sound weren't necessarily in the business, because, after I found my own thing, I wasn't trying to copy anybody anymore; they're just people I respect. My mother heads that list. In fact, she's my greatest influence overall. She wasn't a very well-educated woman, but she was one of the most brilliant people--in a street sense--that I've ever known. She had a parable for everything and she related them all on my level. As an adult, I've come to see the wisdom of all the things she told me. When I went blind, she helped me not to have self-pity or dependency on others. Whatever I did before I lost my eyes, as far as possible, she'd make me do afterward--whether I bumped my head or stumped my shins doing it. Everybody I've admired has been the kind of person who could make something out of the things most folks take for granted: George Washington Carver and the peanut, Martin Luther King and the laws of this country; and Thomas Edison. I read where one of Edison's aides went up to him one time and said, "Sir, we've made 740 mistakes on this project." And he said to the aide, "Son, we haven't made any mistakes; we've just found 740 things that won't work." Edison probably invented the light bulb on his 741st try.

[Q] Playboy: When did the idea of making your living in music first occur to you?

[A] Charles: I've loved music since I was three or four years old. A great old man named Wylie Pittman used to live next door to us in Florida. He was always playing that fine boogiewoogie on an old piano on his front porch. Even if I was in the yard, shooting marbles or something with my playmates, I'd go over to Mr. Pittman's house whenever I heard him working out on that upright; I loved it. I'd hop up on the piano seat beside him and he'd let me bang on the treble keys. I thought I was doing exactly what he was doing, but at that age, I wasn't doing anything but mashin' ivory. He had quite a bit of faith in me, though, because he'd always say, "That's good, Ray. Just keep on practicing." I guess he figured if a little kid like me was interested enough in music to leave his friends and join an old man like him, I must have music in my bones.

[A] Once, when I was six years old, he took me down to a little café and had his friends listen to me play. That was my first concert, I guess. Of course, I always did try to sing--I was raised in the Baptist Church, you know--so nobody had to encourage me to use my voice. When I was seven, I went to the blind school and, eventually, I got into the music classes. I stayed there until I was 15, and by that time, I was playing piano, organ, alto saxophone and a few other things and I was writing braille arrangements for big bands--maybe 16-or 17-piece groups. While I was at the school, I formed a little group and we started out playing for ladies' tea parties and church socials on Sundays. That would bring in two or three bucks, which was pretty good wages for a young kid with no expenses. When I left the school, I decided that I'd just keep on making music, instead of mops and brooms, which was what they taught us to do at school. I've never regretted it.

[Q] Playboy: Considering the fundamentalist church style of your singing, do you think you might have entered the ministry if you hadn't become a musician?

[A] Charles: No. Although I've always loved and respected the Church, I think--even though I can't imagine such a thing at this point--that if I hadn't been a musician, I'd have been a lawyer. Aside from the fact that I've always been fascinated with the law, it's a field I could have learned without my sight. One of my friends from the blind school is an attorney now in Daytona Beach. I think I would have been a trial lawyer; I can't stand my speaking voice, but I like to talk. Music is my work, though, and I love it too much to see how I could really have done anything else.

[Q] Playboy: Do you get as much satisfaction playing for yourself as for your audiences?

[A] Charles: No, I'm afraid not. When I'm playing for audiences, there's the satisfaction of making people happy as well as making music. When you've got the audience swinging with you, somehow they pull something out of you that you didn't know you had. It's kind of like the mother who lifted the car off her son when it turned over on top of him; any other time, she'd have had trouble just rolling up the window.

[Q] Playboy: How much time do you spend performing on the road?

[A] Charles: We're traveling about nine months out of the year--from April through December. The rest of the time, we're here in L. A., recording, recuperating and getting the show ready for the road again. Seven of those road months count as solid working time and three quarters of that is spent doing one-night concerts.

[Q] Playboy: That's a rough grind.

[A] Charles: In the early Fifties, it was rough. We used to get in a car and drive, say, 400 miles. That would take close to ten hours. When we'd get into the town where we were working, we'd be lucky if we had time to grab a bath and a sandwich before we went onstage. Now that we're in a position to ask for certain things, we try to schedule dates no more than 300 or 400 miles apart and, with the plane, we can do that stretch in less than an hour. It's still hard work, sometimes, but, thank God, we're doing what we like to do. On the other hand, some people see you onstage for only a couple of hours a day and think you're really living the life. Well, I'd like to tell them that we've got the kind of gig that takes as much out of a man in that time as some other jobs don't in half a day. Keeps me in shape, though; I've weighed 165 pounds since I was 18.

[Q] Playboy: On the road, you're surrounded by one of the largest entourages of any entertainer in show business. Are all these people indispensable?

[A] Charles: Ain't nobody indispensable--even me. The public can get tired of me any time. Everybody traveling with me--the band, the Raeletts, my manager, my valet, my pilot, everybody--has a job and we expect each one to do what he's supposed to, just like the public expects Ray Charles to do.

[Q] Playboy: You have the reputation among some as a demanding, temperamental man to work for and a stickler for detail. Is there any truth to that?

[A] Charles: I don't ask any musician or anybody else around here to do anything I'm not ready to do. For example, when the band has to have a long rehearsal to get a number down pat, I don't send my band director to handle the job while I sleep; I'm right there with them. You're correct, though, that I've been accused of all that you say. On the other hand, I've seen some mighty happy faces backstage when the fans come up and tell them how good they sounded or how fine they looked. So I'll take that kind of criticism as long as I get that kind of results.

[Q] Playboy: It was widely reported that a salary dispute caused your previous group of Raeletts to quit abruptly on the final night of your 1968 Cocoanut Grove stint. According to one magazine's account, a figure of $300 per week was the bone of contention, and your refusal to pay this sum caused their dissatisfied departure, along with that of your star instrumentalist and several other band members.

[A] Charles: Well, I don't need to make any enemies for myself by commenting on that question. I'll just say that they quit--I didn't fire them. Whatever reasons they gave for leaving are their own; but if I had fired them, I'd be more than happy to tell you why. I'll say this, too: That was the third set of Raeletts I've had over the years--because women come and go in an organization like this for various female reasons--and that was the best set I ever had; they were excellent. But I have no intention of letting musicians or the girls or anyone else run this outfit. When the day comes that they do that, then I quit.

[Q] Playboy: Obviously, you are the captain of your ship. But with so many components--your two planes, your touring company of 45, your home offices and staff, your recording studios and all the rest to keep tabs on--how do you find time to create musically?

[A] Charles: As far as managing the financial end of it goes, I look at it like this: It's all a matter of zeros--whether you're talking about ten bucks or 100,000. You ain't going to last long if your outlay is greater than your intake. Since I'm in business to make an honest dollar--because I'm too chicken to steal--I figure I might as well make two or three extra while I'm at it. To do this, of course, I've got certain people to do certain things, but I've lost too much sweat and blood to be careless. It's not a matter of mistrusting anybody; it's just good business. Now, I don't go around checking to see who bought the toilet paper last week, but, between consulting my accountant and my business manager, I have a pretty good idea where I stand. That leaves me enough time for the musical end of things.

[Q] Playboy: What's your annual income?

[A] Charles: I doubt if I'd qualify for the poverty program; I guess it's enough to make a decent living. It's been alleged that I make a hell of a lot of money, but what I've heard it said I make is a damn sight more than I get to keep. While Uncle Sam is strong-arming me out of it, he keeps singing in my ear: "It's not the gross but the net, darlin'." Unfortunately, I make too much money to be called poor and too little to feel rich.

[Q] Playboy: With the little bit the Government leaves you, and with your busy schedule, how do you spend your leisure time?

[A] Charles: I'm a great lover of chess, and it doesn't cost me a nickel. Other than that, I go to baseball and football games.

[Q] Playboy: It's hard to conceive of Ray Charles as a spectator, but your pilot even says that you can fly both the Viscount and your smaller plane. How?

[A] Charles: Well, just as a matter of survival or self-defense. I don't want the FAA thinking I go around buzzing rooftops, 'cause, of course, I don't have a license to fly. But if my pilot should suddenly have a stroke or something--God forbid--I could probably bring the plane down without killing anybody. It's a matter of three things: staying level, knowing my altitude and keeping the right air speed. First of all, I'd find the gauge called the artificial horizon. This is made like an airplane, with wings on it. The wings are supposed to be even with a hairline on the gauge when the plane is level. Now, I'd take some kind of hard metal, probably my lighter, and break the glass on the gauge and feel the wings with my finger tips, to make sure they're in the horizontal position. Next, I'd break the glass on the altimeter. This gauge has hands on it just like the face of a clock, so I can feel how high up I am by checking the position of the hands. The same goes for my air-speed indicator; I don't want to go too slow, because I'll stall, and not too fast, because I'll overshoot the runway when I try to land. After I did all this as quick as I could, I'd call the tower and tell them what happened and what I was going to do. Then I'd climb up to 12,000 or 13,000 feet and practice landing by slowing the plane clown and dipping it, and so forth, all the time feeling the gauges, to see what was really happening. Once I felt I had practiced enough, I'd attempt to actually land. I might tear off a wing or something, but I think I'd come out alive. That's what they call flying blind, you know.

[Q] Playboy: It's reported that you once even repaired your plane after mechanics had worked on it in vain for some time. Is your ability to handle mechanical equipment the result of memory development or hypersensitive touch?

[A] Charles: I've always wanted to know how things tick, so--with the plane--I studied the principles that make it fly. The case of the repair job on the plane was a simple thing, really; it happened when they were trying to put an intake pipe on one side of the engine. As soon as the guy would get it tightened up in one place, it would come loose in another. He was struggling like hell, and I finally asked what the problem was. It turned out that the pipe bolted down from a funny angle underneath and he couldn't see the thing as well as I could feel it. So I just readied up under the pipe, found the holes, screwed the bolts in and we were ready to take off.

[A] Sometimes, I fool around with my radio or television set, if either one goes bad. I guess I'll probably shock myself to death one day. That's why I don't recommend that other blind people mess with electricity or motors and things. With any handicapped person, it's a matter of self-confidence. I don't have a dog or a cane, but I get where I have to go. Matter of fact, Playboy gave me a motor scooter as a Christmas present in 1960, and I used to take it out to the Coliseum and ride it.

[Q] Playboy: You drove it at speeds of up to 60 miles an hour, we recall, by following the sound of another scooter in front of you. But how about your chess-playing ability? Do you remember the positions of all the chessmen as you maneuver through the game?

[A] Charles: I can feel where the pieces are, just like you can see them, so I really don't have to remember that much. Incidentally, I don't think because you lose your eyesight, your other senses automatically become better. A blind person's faculties get better only if he develops them. A person with sight could develop the same memory or hearing or sense of touch that blind people generally have; but unless a person loses his eyes, he just never feels the need to go to the extra trouble. Since I've lost mine--and I don't want to depend on people for every little thing--I've made the effort. Now, all my other senses are probably above normal, except my sense of taste. But I don't need that one any more or less than anybody else.

[Q] Playboy: Without eyes, but with heightened sensitivity in other areas, do you think you're as aware of the world as the man who is able to see?

[A] Charles: Because I can't check things visually, I think my observations are sharper in other ways. With people, for instance, I say to hell with their physical selves and I concentrate on their inner looks. While folks are being so careful about surface things, I'm checking the things they don't realize I can see: the way people approach me, what they talk about, whether they're putting on airs by doing things like using perfect English. All these things tell me what their characters and personalities are like. For this reason, I think I can spot real people and phonies quicker than most folks. Let's say a cat with eyes gets together with a fine, sexy woman. Well, she's got half her battle won right there; he's so wiped out by the sight of her talents that he's in danger of giving up a week's pay check before they even get into bed. Now, with me, she's got to show how good her talents work--plus have a good story--before I even twitch. If you work hard enough, you can turn almost anything to your advantage.

[Q] Playboy: It sounds as if blindness is hardly a handicap to you at all.

[A] Charles: I can't say as I miss a hell of a lot. I don't care that much about driving a car. I've got a Cadillac and a Volkswagen, and to me, riding in one is about the same as riding in the other. I follow what's going on on television by the sound track, just like I do in real life. The same goes for the movies--all except those silents with people like Rudolph Valentino in them. I get just as much from being around my kids, hearing them and touching them and looking into their insides, as most other parents, who can see. And I know my wife is a beautiful woman.

[Q] Playboy: You've been blind for 32 of your 39 years. How much of the world do you remember?

[A] Charles: I remember colors--red, green, blue, the basic colors. Nothing weird like chartreuse. I remember the moon, stars, sunsets. I remember what my mother looked like. And I know what most of the things I sing about look like.

[Q] Playboy: According to most reports, after suffering severe injury in an auto accident, Bessie Smith was refused admission to one Mississippi hospital and bled to death on the way to another. Do you think your blindness, which was a progressive deterioration, could have been prevented if unsegregated medical care had been available to you in 1937?

[A] Charles: It's possible, if we'd had the money. The doctors who've looked at me since seem to think there was a possibility, too. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to blame the whole thing on being a Negro in the South; I could have been a white boy and still lost my sight, if I didn't have the money. Then, too, money's no guarantee of anything, if fate wants to deal you a blow. The Kennedys are the best proof of that.

[Q] Playboy: Fate dealt you one blow even before you lost your sight, didn't it?

[A] Charles: Which one do you mean?

[Q] Playboy: When you lost your brother.

[A] Charles: That happened when I was five years old. My brother was about three and a half, and we were playing in our back yard. There was one of those big number-four washtubs filled with water and my brother kept leaning over into it. All of a sudden, he tumbled into it headfirst. The first thing I thought about was trying to pull him out, but he was almost as big as I was and, with his clothes all soaked and everything, he was too heavy. When I saw I couldn't pull him out, I ran and got my mother, who was ironing in the front yard. She ran back and snatched him out and gave him artificial respiration, but it was too late.

[Q] Playboy: You said your mother was a major inspiration in your life. Were you close during those early years?

[A] Charles: Emotionally, yes. But a lot of the time, she had to be off at work. She did some of everything; she even worked at the town sawmill. Her job was stacking up piles of boards and feeding them into a big sawing machine. She also took in washing and worked as a cook for a white family in town. That reminds me; there's one thing about white people in the South: If they hate black people, they really hate us; but if they like us, vice versa. When my mother died, there were as many white people as black people at her funeral.

[Q] Playboy: Was your father equally well liked?

[A] Charles: Yeah. He was just a man who cut crossties and drove spikes for the railroad and liked to fool around with motors and things in his spare time; but in that town his word meant something, at a time when a man's word was his bond. Nowadays, a man's bond is his bank account. If a friend of his got arrested on some charge like being drunk, my father could go down to the jail and tell the man that he guaranteed everything was going to be all right and the fellow would let my father's friend out of the cell. My father used to go fishing with the president of the bank. Greenville, Florida, was that kind of town; there weren't more than 300 people there and they all knew each other.

[A] A Negro could get along in most places in the South in those days, as long as he acted like a man. Now, this doesn't mean being an Uncle Tom, either. My father was respected in that town by whites and blacks because he respected everybody else and he always did what he said he was going to do. On the other hand, if he wasn't going to do something, killing him wouldn't have changed his mind. This the white man had to accept. Matter of fact, the white man accepted almost anything out of a black man but making love with his women. I even know of a couple of instances in Florida where black men got away with killing white ones. Now, I don't say that walking around free after knocking off a white man was par for the course, but there was one case that involved this man who was one of those fellows white people called "good nigras," the kind of guy who loved his people and, when he went into town, bought what he needed and got the hell out of there. Anyway, one evening, he was sitting on his front porch with his family, swinging in his swing chair, and along comes this white guy, cussing his head off. He stops in front of the black man's house, still cussing. The black man asked him to please stop cussing because of his family. The white guy said, "Look, this is a white man you're talking to, nigger. You know better than to tell me what to do." The black man said, "Look, sir, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't stand in front of my house, then. This is my wife and kids here." Then the white guy decided he'd not only stand in front of the house and cuss, he figured he'd go into the yard and do it. The black guy said, "I wouldn't do that if I were you, sir." "Boy," the white man said, "I'm going to kick your ass for telling me what to do." So as the white man walked through the gate, the black man reached inside his door and got his 16-gauge shotgun. The white man got one foot on the steps as the gun went off and blew a hole through his stomach.

[A] Now, black folks' houses in those days were built with long hallways straight through from front to back, with a couple of rooms off to each side--and the white guy staggered backward, then ran straight through the house, just like the shotgun blast, and fell dead in the back yard. The black man had one of his friends go get the sheriff. The sheriff knew the black guy well and, when he heard how the shooting happened, he just told the black guy to leave town until things cooled off. His family stayed on there while he was gone and nothing happened to them. Pretty soon, he was back and everything was forgotten. This was a Southern town and there were some pretty mean white folks there, but they were fair if you were known to mind your own business. Pick another town and have that same incident happen and, Christ, maybe they'd knock off two or three black families for that.

[A] As I say, though, the one thing a black man couldn't do anywhere in the South was get caught with a white woman. A lot of young black men were jailed for years, even castrated, sometimes lynched, if it was just rumored that they had even looked at one. I guess it was such a big obsession with the white man because he knew what he'd done to black women during slavery. So every time a black man looked at a white woman--or every time a white man thought one of us did--he probably said to himself: "They're going to get even with me for taking their sisters and their mothers." They're way off base, though.

[Q] Playboy: In what way?

[A] Charles: There might be one Negro in a thousand that wants a white woman just because she's white. But, even then, don't forget: If people kept you away from Chinese girls for 300 years, you'd be curious to see what yellow women are like. And, I might add, white women are pretty curious about black men, too.

[Q] Playboy: As a young blade, you cut quite a swath among your female fans. In fact, this resulted in your receiving a number of paternity suits, didn't it?

[A] Charles: Yeah, I'm afraid so. But although nothing's ever certain, I think all those problems are solved now.

[Q] Playboy: At the same time you were being called to account for your frolicking, you were a heavy user of narcotics. Yet addicts lead notoriously asexual lives. How did you manage to do both?

[A] Charles: Nothing, narcotics included, has ever hampered my love of women or caused me not to demonstrate my fullest appreciation for the feminine set. Age is going to do that sooner or later, they tell me. But the first time I thought that junk was decreasing my sexual powers, I'd have kicked it cold.

[Q] Playboy: What made you begin using drugs?

[A] Charles: I'd rather not talk about it.

[Q] Playboy: Many people are aware that you were a heroin addict for a number of years. Don't you think that some of your younger fans, who might be inclined to go the same route, could be influenced against it by what you could tell them about the unglamorous reality of heavy drug taking?

[A] Charles: Bullshit. Everybody's aware that cigarettes probably cause cancer, but how many people do you think would give them up just because they read that Ray Charles has stopped smoking? The narcotics thing is a road to nowhere, I'll say that. It's something I don't recommend to anybody, because it doesn't help anybody to become a better person, any more than cigarettes do. But people don't listen to that kind of advice about cigarettes or drugs. I'll put it this way: If you see me smoking a Chesterfield, it's because I'm enjoying it. If you see me two years from now, after I've quit, and you ask me if I had any regrets about that Chesterfield, I'm going to tell you, "Hell, no, I enjoyed it while I smoked it--and that's that."

[Q] Playboy: Can we assume, then, as far as the use of addictive drugs is concerned, that you think they're OK--as long as the users know what they're doing to themselves?

[A] Charles: Assume anything you want. I've thoroughly enjoyed this interview so far, but I'm fed up with talking about that aspect of my life. Jesus Christ couldn't get me to say another word on the subject to anybody.

[Q] Playboy: Could we persuade you to talk a little more on the subject of racism?

[A] Charles: That's a different story.

[Q] Playboy: All right. How old were you when you first became aware of race prejudice?

[A] Charles: The impact wasn't strong until I was about ten years old. Before that, all us kids--black and white--used to play together, and it never occurred to me that anybody was different from anybody else. Sometime after I was in the blind school, I started asking myself why they had a white side and a colored side to the campus. Of course, that's not the case anymore; but back then, all the facilities on the white side were better than the ones on the colored side. There was only one hospital at the school and, of course, it was on the white side. If we had to be separated like that, I wondered why the damn hospital wasn't in the middle. The whole thing about having different sides seemed stupid to me, because, hell, we were all blind.

[Q] Playboy: Of course, you are both black and blind. Which one have you found to be the bigger obstacle?

[A] Charles: As I've said, I learned how to handle my blindness pretty early in life, thanks to my mother and a little hard work. I'm a lot better equipped to handle things than a lot of blind people I know; I do what I want and I go where I want. But because I'm a black man, whatever affects my people affects me. This means that the greatest handicap I've had--and still have--is my color. Until every man in America can get any job that he's qualified for or any house he's got the money to buy, regardless of his color, I'll always be handicapped.

[Q] Playboy: The voter-registration campaigners of the early Sixties felt that casting ballots was the best method of attaining the kind of black power you're talking about. But a smaller percentage of the registered black voters utilized their franchise in the last national election than in 1964. Do you think this indicates that blacks are beginning to regard the electoral process as a futile exercise?

[A] Charles: I don't know why many of us didn't vote in the last election, but it was a bad thing. When I consider that men like Martin Luther King and a lot of other black and white people--the Kennedys included--got themselves beaten into the ground, stomped, spit on and killed so that black people could have the ballot, I hate to think that they went through all of that hell for nothing. I believe more in the power of the vote than in getting a gun and trying to kill off the whole white race. I think that's absolutely stupid. There aren't enough of us, to begin with. If the white man wanted to, all he'd have to say is that every dollar in the United States is void. Then he could issue new currency--to whites only--and we'd be up shit's creek. One of the only sensible weapons the black man's got is the ballot. If neither Humphrey nor Nixon looks good to me, I'll still have to go with the lesser of two evils. I hear a lot of black people saying they're sorry that Nixon's in now. I ask 'em if they voted for Humphrey or anybody else. "No," they say. "Well, then," I tell them, "you don't have the right to be sorry now."

[Q] Playboy: During the Johnson Administration, Congress passed a record number of measures supporting civil rights, and the Warren Court drew cries from the right for the impeachment of its Chief Justice because of the liberality with which he led that body. Nevertheless, all this did little, if anything, to reduce the level of animosity among blacks and whites. Furthermore, to the delight of white segregationists, a growing number of blacks have now rejected integration as a goal. How do you feel about a geographically and racially divided U. S. A.?

[A] Charles: I am 100 percent for the country being united. Right now, Vietnam is divided and at war. It's practically the same in Korea. Then there's Nationalist China and mainland China, Nigeria and Biafra, black America and white America. Too many people have been burned, lynched and nailed to the cross fighting for equal rights to separate this country now. We've got all the laws on the books that the books can hold, but we find that's still not enough, because you can't legislate a person's loves or his hates. What we've got to do now is start learning how to communicate with each other. Without that, we'll never achieve anything. I'm not for going around hating people; I just don't go for that, and I don't go for living apart from all other races in this country. A black man can have his own thing, just like the Italians, the Irish and the Jews have here, without detaching himself from America. After all, no matter how small it's been made to look, the black man's stake is awfully big in this country.

[A] Besides, until we get our own A. T. & T. or General Motors, I don't think the majority of black people will be interested in separating from white America and leaving behind all we helped build up here. Are all the black mothers who gave up their sons in World War Two and Korea and Vietnam just going to say, "OK, take this country, I'm leaving"? Hell, no. Personally, I've paid too many dues for me and my wife and family to give up everything and split. And nobody's going to make me give it up, either--white or black.

[Q] Playboy: Television and movies are beginning to cast blacks in such heretofore "white-only" roles as hero, villain, leader and lover. But the same media have been accused of overplaying protest demonstrations and riot situations, thus deepening tensions between the races. What's your view of the job the media are doing?

[A] Charles: For black people, this revolution's been a matter of taking from any source to further the cause. If white people see so-called black militants on TV, angry and yelling for what they say are their rights, some whites are naturally going to get mad, too. They're scared of anything that looks like black folks getting an even break; for one thing, that may mean they'll have to compete evenly for the jobs that're offered. But that's just the backlash, of course. By and large, TV is making the whole world aware of the problems we're having; and even if not many white Americans are moved to help solve them, the majority are going to stay out of the way of the people who are working for better conditions. So, generally speaking, television and radio and magazines and movies are doing a hell of a job on things like this. It's also because of the media that black music has been heard by a much wider audience than it would have if people had to come into the ghettos to hear it in person. Music has brought more young people together than all the integration rulings of the Supreme Court.

[Q] Playboy: You may see music as a healing influence, but there are those who disagree with you. Orange County, California's Republican Congressman, James B. Utt, wrote in a recent newsletter to his constituency: "Communists have used hypnotic, rhythmic music to gain acceptance of their evil programs. ... Extensive experiments have shown how rock-'n'-roll music leads to a destruction of the normal inhibitory mechanisms of the cerebral cortex and permits easy acceptance of immorality and disregard of all moral norms." What's your opinion of this analysis?

[A] Charles: My opinion is that it's bullshit. This is a much freer society these days than it was even a few years ago, but music hasn't had that much to do with it. It was a lot sexier in the "old days," when people used to dance right up next to each other, if you want to look at it that way. There's nothing on earth sexier to me than holding a woman's soft, warm body right up next to mine. But nowadays, people don't even hold hands. I've heard that music has caused youngsters to go out and rape women and rob men, but how can they blame that on rhythm-and-blues or rock music? It's been around for too long to set folks on a rampage now.

[A] The thing that used to make some folks say that about black music is the fact that it's always been associated with shaking the hips, rolling the stomach and putting a lot of emotion into the dancing; it's a little less strait-laced than the waltz, you know. But nobody's leading anybody down the road to sexual destruction that wasn't on the way there in the first place. Maybe the lyrics are too sexy for some people today; but, you know, ten years ago, when I first sang "Baby, shake that thing," they said that was shocking--too racy. They even banned it on a lot of radio stations. Today, of course, it's a common thing. I think they've found out the less you try to censor, the less people have to get frantic about.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel as challenged by what you undertake these days as you did a few years ago, or are there no more walls to scale after over 20 successful years in show business?

[A] Charles: This is really my 26th year in this business. Any entertainer who can say that has to be mighty grateful. I've watched lots of very good people come and go in this profession. Guys who were making a mint just ten years ago aren't around today, in most cases. The public is responsible for the fact that I'm not gone, along with them. I intend to keep on working as hard as I can to make the best music I know how for as long as the public wants to hear it. When they get tired of me coming onstage, I guess I'll just make records. And if they don't buy my new records, I'll just write songs. And when those don't sell, I'll just lay back and live off my royalties and work for worthy organizations like SCLC and the Sickle Cell Disease Research Foundation. Any way it goes, I can't kick; life has been good to me.

[Q] Playboy: Have you any regrets?

[A] Charles: Every experience I've had--good and bad--has taught me something. The good things I've tried to keep; the bad things I tried to throw out, once I was convinced they were detrimental. I was born a poor boy in the South, I'm black, I'm blind, I once fooled around with drugs, but all of it was like going to school--and I've tried to be a good student. I don't regret a damn thing.