Posted 4:57 PM by Gene

On the day poor Mrs. Slut hurt her knee we're reminded what real music used to be like, and why we'll never get it again. If Ray Charles was the self-parody in his last years -- doing the Vegas schtick, lending his name and likeness to slot machines, selling Diet Pepsi for a bunch of equally blind twenty-something ad producers -- it was only because he was at it for so long, and in earning the vast popularity he deserved he had to play to his vast audience, some of whom, we can assume, were not exactly diehard r&b fans. And Ray Charles defined r&b much as Satchmo defined jazz, with a gravelly voice, and boundless soul. You cannot take a song like "Georgia on My Mind" (a song that was Hoagy Carmichael's) and turn it not only into your own, but into the national anthem of soul, by being a human karaoke machine. What is more, he had in him a more diverse idea of music than one could get from a thousand Mrs. Sluts, at home with not only with the jazz and blues that nurtured him, but with pop tunes, country -- you name it, he never did it without the most fiery intensity. Intensity -- that's what we don't have from our entertainers anymore. In its place we have publicity stunts, or as Rex Reed put it, people with "head mikes."