Ray Charles

Seventy-three minutes

Ray Charles played Montreux four times, across three editions of the festival: on 13 July 1978 at the Casino, then two nights running on 16 and 17 July 1991, again at the Casino, and finally on 19 July 1997, this time at the Auditorium Stravinski, the great hall inaugurated four years earlier. That last concert is the one people know, because it was filmed and released.

He was sixty-six. On stage, his big band was led by saxophonist Al Jackson, and the Raelettes, his long-standing backing singers, were with him. Eighteen songs in seventy-three minutes.

The programme naturally delivered the monuments (“Georgia on My Mind”, “What’d I Say”, “I Can’t Stop Loving You”, “Busted”) but also less expected choices: “Scotia Blues”, an Oscar Peterson instrumental, and “Watch Them Dogs” sung with the Raelettes.

The film and the bust

The 1997 concert was released on video, then on DVD and Blu-ray, under the title “Live at Montreux 1997”.

His bust, a work by Marco Zeno given by Barbara J. Riley to Claude Nobs, shows him at the keyboard, head thrown back with laughter; his name is engraved on the keys. It stands in the garden of the Montreux Palace, beside those of Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, B.B. King, Carlos Santana and Quincy Jones.

“He was as great as Armstrong”

The singer Henri Salvador, who had met Ray Charles in Montreux, left a moving testimony. “Ray Charles, I got to know him at your place, in Montreux,” he said. The two men sang a duet for the Victoires de la musique: as Salvador spoke poor English, Ray told him “No problem, let’s take one of yours!”. Salvador launched into “Le blues du dentiste”, by Boris Vian, and Ray improvised at once. “Masterly.”

“Ray Charles was not followed as much as he deserved. He belongs, like Miles, like Armstrong, to those musicians so great, so far ahead, that their influence is hard to measure,” Salvador went on, stressing how few people knew what a “phenomenal composer” this showman was, with roots planted in gospel.

He also kept the memory of his humour: “One day he told me: I am blind and a musician, my life is visiting hotels, giving concerts and making love.” A humour “wonderful, dark of course”, in a man “very simple and a bon vivant”.

Atlantic and Ahmet Ertegun, who revealed him

Ray Charles’s career owed much to one man: Ahmet Ertegun, son of a Turkish diplomat, who had founded the Atlantic label in 1947 with his brother Nesuhi. “At that time I was the only person who loved Ray Charles. I bought his contract without ever having seen him, after a single song,” Ertegun recalled. It was on Atlantic that “What’d I Say” appeared.

Ertegun also composed, under the pen name A. Nugetre (his name backwards), for the pleasure of hearing Ray sing his pieces, such as “Mess Around”. In his New York office, framed, hung the cheque of Ray Charles’s very first royalties.

The Montreux Jazz Festival paid tribute to the Ertegun brothers in 2006. Even before creating his festival, Claude Nobs had knocked on their door and obtained everything from them: artists, a job and an address book that would change his life.