Seeing Ray a time and 2/3, about to see more, is triggering two things in my head, one not surprising, the other totally unexpected.
In the '50s I knew Monk, the name and the music, and saw him several times, more off stage than on: riding the subway, etc.
I respected him more in theory than in fact. I bought his records but didn't listen to them that much, or that closely. I heard Bird and Diz, the rest was background, not noticed in detail.
When my friends went around saying Monk is the greatest genius of all time, I took it with the same grain of salt as when they said that Ornette Coleman was the greatest genius of all time. I even took my own similar pronouncements with at least some salt, no matter who the statement was canonizing.
Of course in those days my taste was forming. I swallowed much on recommendation, felt lots more reservations than I admitted to: didn't always like Bird's tone, or harmony, thought I heard mistakes. Same even with Miles.
Now though I can't find ANY of those supposed "mistakes." Whether my taste was in the right direction or not, it hadn't matured, wasn't seasoned. I wasn't experienced enough to "understand" all parts.
And of course I'm still not: no one ever is.
But by the time I saw the '89 Monk, in the '90s sometime, I was seeing and hearing and understanding much more than in the '50s.
And of course now if I don't like something (from any of those guys) I also don't mind thinking it's them, not me; but also don't mean it to be infallible.
Anyway Clint's movie emphatically makes the true point that I'm not surprised to recall in relation to Ray: Monk was the first (to get anywhere into the public light) to be 100% black and to refuse 100% to be anything but 100% black. A hero.
If we didn't like it, fuck us. If he starved, so be it.
Ray too. But I'll come back to that.
Now did Monk try a little extra hard? go a few steps out of his way? IMAGINE what "black" was and widen the envelope? Of course. It's not that any part of any such thing is objective or complete. 100% mental constructs. Connected however to actual living beings and real physical events and things.
Ray too. Anybody. (Woody Guthrie must have a little bit invented what an Oakie was.) (Forster is imagining Englishmen BEYOND his experience of them.)
In penetrating to the essence of blues and gospel, did Ray add anything? I don't say it as a fact, but I bet. Even just combining, so both essences show (related anyhow), is an adding.
More on any of that coming or not, here's the surprising thing: Hearing Ray in my head, I was suddenly also hearing Elvis!
(Not at all surprising, I was also hearing Billie!!! and Edith Piaf!) All three had utterly their own timbre, their own texture, and all three had supreme mastery of the gargled dying note.)
I emphasize a correlation there that you may know but which may not be obvious: Ray and Elvis were around in the '50s but Elvis didn't jump into the world light till TV, and Ray didn't jump into, well, national light until '57 or '58.
Elvis was on TV. Sure I saw that he was good, unique, had a real voice. Still I shrugged: I had my priorities set by then and important things didn't come to me via TV. or radio, juke boxes.
And that's the very thing about Ray: I heard him on the juke box in the West End. Count Basie / Joe Williams Roll 'Em Pete was also on the West End juke box. THAT I listened to when it came on, but that I already knew: inside / out. When Ray came on, guy's would say, Hey, listen to that. And I'd shrug, and agree: lukewarm.
You see it didn't come to me through Birdland: where I would have paid better attention.
So as Ray's hits followed, one after another, I was still always just hearing them on juke boxes and not really paying attention. Even when you lent me that CD I was at least partly listening to it as pre-labeled "pop."
Tina Turner's What's Love Got to Do with It is a great movie that shows what was happening grassroots in the '50s into the '60s. Ray does the same. (With the difference that I'd heard ALL of Ray's things and had heard almost none of hers) (that River Deep thing she did with Phil Specter excepted.)
Elvis' stuff I heard – in the background. It's only now I'm beginning to realize that he was really good.
And one way that he was really good he has absolutely in common with Ray (and with Leadbelly, and Woody ...): he could suit the English to his rhythm every which way without EVER stretching it, fucking it up, going for lame "rimes." (That's a metaphor; I don't mean he rimed anything, and though he did, that's still not what I mean.) There was never an artificial microsecond.
Even Billie had artificial microseconds, when you could tell she was stretching, pronouncing a word the way she thought it should be pronounced instead of the way she pronounced it. Very few, but not zero.
Neither Monk nor Ray ever had an artificial moment. That I heard.
But the real thing that Ray and Monk have in common: multiple rhythms, multiple voices: coming out of one man.
Macroinformation generators.
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