Ray Charles quotes:

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I saw Ray Charles at Massey Hall. -- Robbie Robertson
Who isn't a fan of Ray Charles? -- John Scofield
Ray Charles has always been a big part of my life. -- Darius Rucker
Well I don't think I've scored my life exclusively to Ray Charles. -- Taylor Hackford
All other nations are drinking Ray Charles beer and we are drinking Barry Manilow. -- Dave Barry
I don't think I've met anyone with a stronger work ethic than Ray Charles. -- Clint Eastwood
When you listen to Ray Charles, there's never any doubt whose voice that is. -- Clint Eastwood
Ray Charles, who said to Stevie Wonder, Maybe we're white. Never got a dinner! -- Red Buttons
Most people are dead. Hitler. Ray Charles. Some other guys. But mostly those two. -- Louis C. K.
I didn't even respect singers until I heard Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong. -- J. D. Souther
The average American's day planner has fewer holes in it than Ray Charles's dart board. -- Dennis Miller
I'm proud of my mentors. Ray Charles is the strongest influence on me as a singer. -- Michael Bolton
I show more blind rage than Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles wrestling in a steel cage. -- Chino XL
I'm proud of my mentors. Ray Charles is the strongest influence on me as a singer -- Michael Bolton
The first piece of music that captured my imagination was probably Ray Charles Live At Newport. -- Van Morrison
I always say that I went to the College of Blossoms and the University of Ray Charles. -- Merry Clayton
Give it up for Ray Charles and his beautiful legacy. And thank you, Ray Charles, for living. -- Jamie Foxx
I met Ray Charles at 14, and he was 16. But he was like a hundred years older than me. -- Quincy Jones
When I was a kid, I always looked up to people like B.B. King and Ray Charles. -- Daryl Hall
I would like to be able to do a song with Ray Charles, before we both get too old. -- Joe Cocker
Ray Charles, in his own way, it's like at the beginning, Ray Charles changed American music, not once but twice. -- Taylor Hackford
The church didn't know what to do with Ray Charles or Al Green. And so they were kind of ostracized. -- lecrae
Everyone felt like they knew Ray Charles and in a way they did, because he was embodied by his music. -- Ahmet Ertegun
My dad has always been a big Ray Charles fan, and I've grown up listening to all kinds of music. -- Avicii
Randy Newman seemed like an even worse singer than me. I liked Ray Charles, Levi Stubbs, Jack Jones, Joe Tex, Wilson Pickett. -- Donald Fagen
I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox. -- Tom Waits
I haven't really heard much that's impressed me the way it was when I first heard Ray Charles or somebody like that. That was really an impression. -- Van Morrison
God bless Ray Charles. It was such an honor to meet him and sing with him and actually just to watch him sing from just two feet away. -- Norah Jones
Guys like me and Ray Charles, when we was coming up through our days, country music and soul music was just a very thin line between the two. -- Percy Sledge
I have the background singers of Ray Charles, the background singers of Smokey Robinson, and the background singers of Barry White and I built a choir around that. -- Della Reese
When I first heard Ray Charles, he was a flop artist on a small label in California. He hadn't sold any records. And I bought his contract for $2,500. -- Ahmet Ertegun
You knew the difference between Barbra Streisand and Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles, straight away. Now everyone sounds like each other, and I don't think that's right. -- Bobby Womack
I have owned and played a Steinway all my life. It's the best Beethoven piano. The best Chopin piano. And the best Ray Charles piano. I like it, too. -- Randy Newman
There were a whole lot, I bought every blues record I could find, it wasn't just one or two people. My vocal influences were Ray Charles and Bobby Blue Bland -- Johnny Winter
One day, I'll be listening to a bunch of Ray Charles, the next day it's nothing but Red Hot Chili Peppers. The next day it might be Tupac all day. -- J. Cole
There were a whole lot, I bought every blues record I could find, it wasn't just one or two people. My vocal influences were Ray Charles and Bobby Blue Bland. -- Johnny Winter
There are singers that I have enjoyed, from Nina Simone and Ray Charles onward. But the music that made music the number one thing for me as a youth was jazz. -- Robert Wyatt
I liked the more sophisticated urban style of blues like Ray Charles and B. B. King, Bobby Blue Bland, Lou Rawls; people like that with more of a tendency toward jazz. -- Edgar Winter
I think Ray Charles did as much as anybody when he did his country music album. Ray Charles broke down borders and showed the similarities between country music and R&B. -- Willie Nelson
I'm still trying to re-create a Ray Charles concert that I heard when I was fifteen years old, and all my nerve endings were fried and transformed, and electricity shot through me. -- Boz Scaggs
Some golfers fantasize about playing in a foursome with Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Sam Snead. The way I hit I'd rather play in a foursome with Helen Keller, Ray Charles, and Stevie Wonder. -- Bruce Lansky
When you work with Ray Charles, Billy Eckstine and Frank Sinatra, and you tell them to jump without a net, you better know what you're talking about. Thank God I was ready for it. -- Quincy Jones
Atlantic's Jerry Wexler believes first-rate records are made by first-rate voices. He certainly has worked with enough of them: Clyde McPhatter, Joe Turner, La Vern Baker, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin. -- Jon Landau
I grew up listening to a lot of Ray Charles and '60s rock, thanks to my father, and then my brothers got me in to KISS and whatnot, so I guess that's where I got my first taste for music. -- Avicii
Never mind the transience of show business and popularity. When we hear Ray Charles, we go, 'That's a great singer.' You don't need a reporter or a writer to tell us. Good is good and it should shine through the years. -- Art Garfunkel
Absolutely, I grew up listening to soul music. People like Stevie, Aretha, Ray Charles, Michael and Prince. My parents' record collection was all I had when I was a little kid. If it wasn't that, it was something else in their collection. -- Jesse McCartney
The beer sold here in the United States is sweet and watery and lacking in taste and overcarbonated and just generally the lamest, wimpiest beer in the entire known world. All the other nations are drinking Ray Charles beer, and we are drinking Barry Manilow. -- Dave Barry
Ray Charles' revolutionary approach to music was also reflected in his politics and his deep and abiding commitment to Martin Luther King and the plight of African-Americans. Ray Charles may not have been on the front lines, but he put his money where his mouth was. -- Diane Watson
Ray Charles revolutionary approach to music was also reflected in his politics and his deep and abiding commitment to Martin Luther King and the plight of African-Americans. Ray Charles may not have been on the front lines, but he put his money where his mouth was. -- Diane Watson
Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village. downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking, talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues shout blind on the phonograph -- Allen Ginsberg
I recently saw the movie about Ray Charles, and there's a scene where he falls down and the mother doesn't help him. She says, I don't want anyone to treat you like a cripple. I've fallen down before, and Molly will say, get up and just go. -- Teri Garr
Quincy Jones' autobiography 'Q' is very good. Because he's a master at music, he's one of our greatest composers, and its good for him to have a book and tell the good ole days when he was with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan and Ray Charles. -- Ice Cube
Tom Jones is funny to me, man. I mean, he really tries to ape Ray Charles and Sammy Davis, you know. He's nice-looking; he looks good doing it. I mean, if I was him, I'd do the same thing. If I was only thinking about making money. -- Miles Davis
When I was 13, I started working in a nightclub with Ray Charles. That's the greatest school in the world, the school of the streets. Ray taught me how to read in Braille. He was only two years older than me, but it was like he was 100 years older. -- Quincy Jones
I'm a piano player. I never thought of myself as a singer, at all. I was always trying to sound like somebody else. I don't like my own voice, I like Ray Charles, Robert Plant, I like Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart, people that have an edge in their voice. -- Billy Joel
I'm probably the only one in the world you can name that's worked with Billie Holiday, Louie Armstrong, Ella, Duke, Miles, Dizzy, Ray Charles, Aretha, Michael Jackson, rappers. 'Fly Me to the Moon' was played on the moon by Buzz Aldrin. Sinatra. Paul Simon. Tony Bennett. I'm the only one. -- Quincy Jones
Music's been around a long time, and there's going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it's a big record, that's the frosting on the cake, but music's the main meal. -- Ray Charles
I was one of I think three white girls in my school. So, I was very much an outsider. And plus I was Jewish and all of my friends were black and Baptist because they listen to the coolest music. We were all listening to Ray Charles and what was then called race music. -- Janis Ian
I have been influenced by many different artists at many different stages of my life. Starting out, it was people like Elton John, Billy Joel, Ben Folds, and Fiona Apple. As I got older I got deeper into the work of bands like the Beatles, artists like Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Etta James, and Joni Mitchell. -- Sara Bareilles
One of the greatest live recordings, I think, in the history of the world is Ray Charles in Atlanta... And they didn't even have a big mobile recording thing set up. The word on the street was they only had like two microphones, one for the band and one for him. Perfect recordings. I think it's mono. -- Robbie Robertson

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