dispatches from the new world of work

A Dedication!

I never (or at least rarely) "dedicate" a presentation. But I will today, and for the foreseeable future.

The slide following my title slide will read: "For Ray."

This weekend Susan & I watched on DVD the movie Ray.

To be sure, it is a marvel. But the excellence of the movie per se is not the Inspiration for the Dedication.

My point: Ray Charles is the embodiment of the Spirit of Re-imagine! Time and time and time again he chose to Invent & Go His Own Way, to spit in the face of his prior winners, his assured cash flow, his powerful advisors ... and march in the totally new musical direction his Spirit willed him to march.

Surely the movie is a marvelous story of overcoming adversity, from blindness to race to drugs to fame itself. But for me it was, above all, a ... Matchless Tribute to the Power & Glory of Gutsy, Lonely Re-imaginings!

To Ray Charles!
(Check it out!)

(NB: I'm no great movie aficionado, but Jamie Foxx as Ray surely seems Oscar-worthy to me.)

Tom Peters posted this on 02/14/05.

Comments

It is a serious shame he had to die to get the recognition he has deserved from the early sixties. Granted he made some missteps but how else do we grow? Pick up The Best of Ray Charles: The Atlantic Years and enjoy.

Posted by Jack Covert at February 14, 2005 1:09 PM

Grammy awards now also ............

Posted by John at February 14, 2005 8:01 PM

Early this year I saw an article about the highest earning performers, post-death. In the running: Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix. I can't remember for sure, but I think the winner in 2004 was Bob Marley. Their music is certainly not forgotten (ok, with MM it's probably her image that sells, not her singing), and their estates continue to grow, to the benefit of their heirs. This is very nice, in my opinion.

Posted by cathy at February 14, 2005 8:35 PM

Don't forget that (certainly during the 70's and early 80's) Ray was kept away from the public by very narrow minded, "big corp", media programmers. They "knew" what sold and that is that. If this isn't a case of big bucks and marketing getting in the way of fantastic content and talent then I don't know what is.

Probably worth mentioning Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi who were apparently BIG fans and pretty much insisted on his role in the Blues Brothers - Hats off to those guys too - they knew what they liked and were not afraid to show it!

Posted by PaulH at February 15, 2005 7:28 AM

'For Ray'. I love it. You've just convinced my that I must view 'Ray' and quit putting off reading Re-Imangine.

Ray's ethos is incalculable. This man essence has touched us in ways beyond syntax.

While the Bebop revolution was roaring in NYC's W 52nd Street clubs, on the other coast in the clubs of Seattle's Jackson Street area, another catalytic force was being heard; (excerpt from Paul De Barros' Jackson Street Jazz)

"Ray Charles came (to Seattle) in 1948, seventeen years old and searching out his musical styles in clubs throughout town. He began his life-long friendship with Quincy Jones. Jones, two years younger, still attending high school and hungry to understand how to write jazz songs, remembers it as an epiphany: "So Ray hit a B-flat-seventh in root position and a C-seventh, which is a real Dizzy Gillespie kind of sound.... When I saw that, it was like that whole world just opened up. Everything from then on made sense."

/rick

Posted by Rick Kennedy at February 15, 2005 2:24 PM