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Ray Charles

September 2024

  • Attica Correctional Facility, New York, 1972.

    Chess players, from orbiting cosmonauts to the Wu-Tang Clan – in pictures

    An incredible collection of photographs documenting the intersection of chess and culture is published by FUEL, in the year FIDE (the International Chess Federation) celebrates its 100th anniversary. Artists, actors, musicians and more all show their love of the most cerebral of games in Chess Players

April 2023

  • Willie Nelson performing in Texas

    Ranked
    Willie Nelson’s 30 greatest songs – ranked!

    As the 90-year-old country icon releases a new album, I Don’t Know a Thing About Love, we look back on the outlaw’s best tracks

September 2022

  • Mable John in 2008.

    Mable John obituary

    First female singer signed to Motown whose later hit for Stax, Your Good Thing, became a classic of deep soul

August 2022

  • Creed Taylor (right) recording Stan Getz and his band on stage at Cafe Au Go Go for the live album Getz Au Go Go in New York, 19 August 1964.

    Jazz impresario Creed Taylor was one of the last of a dying breed of ‘record men’

    Garth Cartwright
    Armed with just a passion for jazz, Taylor became a producer and the owner of the world’s most successful jazz label, working with everyone from John Coltrane to Nina Simone

May 2022

  • Naomi Judd, center, with her daughters Ashley and Wynonna.

    Naomi Judd: Country Music Hall of Fame induction goes ahead after death

    The Judds and Ray Charles among inductees in Nashville a day after singer dies at 76

August 2021

  • Teenage Kicks 210820 Michael Smiley

    Teenage kicks
    Michael Smiley’s teenage obsessions: ‘I heard the Beat and came back to Belfast a rude boy’

    The comedian and actor on dancing with his mother to Ray Charles, the power of Seamus Heaney’s poetry and how Richard Pryor showed him his future

September 2020

  • Peter King performing in 1994

    Peter King obituary

    Brilliant British jazz saxophonist and composer inspired by Charlie Parker

June 2020

  • Military on the streets of Chicago in The Blues Brothers

    The classic film I've never seen
    I've never seen ... The Blues Brothers

    This 40-year-old comedy – repackaging blues for a white audience – in many ways uncomfortably mirrors what is happening in the UK and America right now

December 2017

  • Sydney Staplehurst cooks the festive family fry-up on Christmas Day 1974.

    Family life
    Family life: Dad cooking the Christmas fry-up; Hit the Road, Jack by Ray Charles; Grandmama’s boozy truffles

    Readers’ favourite photographs, songs and recipes

February 2016

  • 140x84 trailpic for Obama singing at Ray Charles event

    Barack Obama shows off his singing skills at Ray Charles tribute – video

    Wednesday’s event was the final installment of In Performance at the White House, hosted by PBS, and featured performances by Usher, Demi Lovato and the Band Perry

September 2015

  • Ray Charles photograph

    Cerys Matthews, Dr Crotchety
    Cerys Matthews: songs to say goodbye

    Our musical agony aunt’s alter ego marks her final column with some banging tunes

April 2015

  • Big Bird

    Experience
    Experience: I am Big Bird

    ‘I got the job in 1969. I had no idea I’d still be doing it more than 45 years later’

March 2015

  • Ray Charles in 1964.

    From Rock's Backpages
    Ray Charles: 'Genius? That's nothing to be ashamed of' – a classic interview

    It’s 60 years since Ray Charles had a hit with I Got a Woman – what the pop world now considers the first soul single. As he arrived for his first UK tour in May 1963, he gave this interview to New Musical Express, brought to you by Rock’s Backpages

June 2012

  • Louis Smith, Team GB gymnast

    Team GB's London 2012 playlists
    Team GB Olympic playlists: Louis Smith, gymnast

    'It's best to be calm. That's why I listen to reggae, baby!'

May 2012

  • Ray Charles

    60 years of No 1 singles
    The best No 1 singles: Ray Charles – I Can't Stop Loving You

    Simon Hoggart: 1962: For many people, Ray Charles's heart-breaking version of I Can't Stop Loving You legitimised country music

October 2011

  • tomwaits

    Tom Waits: 'I look like hell but I'm going to see where it gets me'

    It's decades since Tom Waits had a drink and his music has just got weirder and better. Now 61, and with his 17th album out, he talks to Tim Adams about songwriting, hard living and his fear of phones

November 2010

  • little richard at 77

    When John Waters met Little Richard

    In 1987, the iconic filmmaker John Waters was sent by Playboy magazine to interview his all-time hero – Little Richard. It was a surreal, almost religious experience for John who had been a lifelong fan of the godfather of rock'n'roll. So why did it almost end in a fistfight?

October 2010

  • Johnn Cash and Ray Charles

    Lost Johnny Cash and Ray Charles duet surfaces

    Collaboration between country legend and soul singer discovered in storage facility gets official release

April 2010

  • Steven Poole's non-fiction choice
    The Public Domain, Intellectuals and Society, and The Shape of the Beast

    Steven Poole's non-fiction choice

May 2007

  • Ray Charles movie hits flat note

    TV overnights: ITV1's terrestrial premiere of the film Ray trailed fourth in the ratings from 9pm. By Ben Dowell.

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