DISGRACELAND - Ray Charles: Busted for Heroin and Busting Genres with the Best Damn R&B

Episode Date: July 13, 2021

Ray Charles was hooked on heroin, arrested by federal agents, and once survived a near-death plane ride by helping the pilot - as a blind man. He invented R&B. He was powerful enough to bring black and white culture into one. He was a genre-melding musical genius. Despite being born into a literal dirt poor existence in the Jim Crow era Deep South, despite going completely blind by the age of seven, and despite his addiction, Ray Charles influenced everyone from the Beatles to Belushi. And he made some of the greatest music of all time. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com. This episode was originally published on July 13, 2021. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram YouTube X (formerly Twitter)  Facebook Fan Group TikTok  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes a suspect is found guilty before a verdict is ever read in court.

On the Wicked Words podcast, I talk with the writers who dig deep into the cases that changed history, including Marsha Clark, who went from prosecuting one of the most famous murder cases to writing crime fiction. It doesn't matter that you didn't take part in the murder. If you were at the scene at all, you're guilty of murder. Every week, the real story is revealed. Join us every Monday for new episodes of Wicked Words. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Ray Charles are insane. He was arrested numerous times for heroin, Marijuana, drug paraphernalia, once by federal agents. He avoided a deadly plane crash by helping pilot a plane, and it's worth noting that he was blind. He used his genius to mix gospel with blues and invent the genre of R&B. Then he melded that new style with country and western

to become one of the biggest selling black artists of his day, crossing over to enjoy mainstream success by attracting a massive white audience. And Ray Charles influenced everyone from the Beatles to Belushi by making some of the greatest music of all time. That music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Mini Chachachacha MK1.

I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Off Weyerson's sweetheart by Vera Lynn. And why would I play you that specific slice of stink Floyd cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on September 3, 1952,

and that was the day Ray Charles signed to Atlantic Records, setting the course for him to manifest the vision of himself he'd had since he was a young boy, a young blind boy, a vision of becoming one of the greatest musicians of all time. On this episode, busted for heroin in busting genres, seeing into the future in the genius of Ray Charles.

I'm Jake Brennan, and this is a good one. disgrace land. Ray Charles was co-piloting the small plane, a six-seat Cessna 310. Ray Charles couldn't see anything, but not because he was blind, because visibility from the snowstorm, he, his pilot, and their one passenger, a diminutive rock journalist who were trying to land in was zero. Zero visibility. No need to lose as cool. The plan was for air traffic-controlled radio and landing instructions. Ray Charles was his pilot's eyes. He communicated the radio instructions to his pilot, who kept his gaze on the cockpit's instrument landing system,

listening to Ray intently, focused on guiding the plane safely into the Oklahoma City landing strip. Ray loved this plane. It made his life a lot easier. Traveling to his concerts this way was much more efficient and theoretically safer. But more than that, Ray Charles, a musician by trade, a piano player, a songwriter, an arranger, and bandleader, having his own plane said to those who cared to know that he'd made it. Despite being born into a literal dirt poor existence in the Jim Crow era deep south, despite going completely blind by the age of seven, despite his heroin addiction and addiction that led to three arrests up until that point. Despite all of that, Ray Charles had made First, as a teenage phenom doing his best Nat King Cole impression, an act that allowed him to make a living playing music at a young age and endeared him to older, more seasoned musicians.

And then as a side man duking it out on the violent Chipplin circuit backing up Lowell Fulson, and then as a singles man signed to Atlantic Records where his genius was given full creative freedom to blossom. And finally, as a highly compensated album artist of the First Order, signed to a lucrative recording contract with ABC Records, a contract that granted him an unprecedented royalty rate as well as ownership of his master recordings, and of course, enough money to buy his own plane. Ray Charles was a somebody in a world of nobody's because that's exactly who his mama told him he would be,

and there was no giving in to defeat. It didn't matter that he was blind. didn't matter that he was born poor, didn't matter that he was black. Those things were givens. There was nothing he could do to change them. The only thing he could change was his own future, how he saw himself, where he saw himself, who he was. And that meant resilience.

That meant no excuses, no self-pity. That meant showing up. That meant not taking no for an answer. That meant working hard and seizing whatever opportunity was put in front of him. White audiences wanted a polite Nat King Cole sounding impersonator? No problem, Ray Charles thought. Nat was a genius, his phrasing, his playing, his delivery, Ray would learn it all and deliver. Lowell Folsom needed a piano player? Sure thing.

Ray Charles would not only give him that, he'd lead his band too, and learn the ways of seasoned road musicians while he was at it. Atlantic Records needed hits to keep their fledgling independent label competitive? Not a problem. Ray Charles would casually meld the gospel in. influence he was raised on with the low-down dirty blues of the Chitland Circuit and invent modern rhythm of blues in the process. Oh, and ABC Records needed Ray to go bigger, wider, to earn out that massive recording contract they'd given him Ray had it figured out. He put all of his previous

experience together and lent his genes to genre melding once again, mixing country and western with sophisticated jazz and pop on his landmark album Modern Sounds and Country and Western, sell a gazillion copies and cross over to a mainstream white audience in a way that no black artist had done prior, not even his hero, Nat King Cole. It was all part of the job. Doing the damn thing, whatever it was, and not accepting his own limitations because those limitations were just that, his own. Show Ray Charles' word was written that he couldn't do a thing because he was blind and he'd point you to nowhere. He didn't need a cane, he had ears, and a mind, and two hands, and he could hear, learn, and feel his way through.

And he didn't need a seeing eye dog either. He wasn't going to become relying on a fucking animal to lead him around. Ray Charles made his way throughout whatever city he was in on his own, onto whatever stage he was playing that night, through whatever song he was playing on his piano, to the end of the set, off of the stage, to the after party, and into the bed of whatever good time gal was hanging around. And just because he was blind,

it didn't mean he settled for women who were less attractive. Ray Charles knew beautiful women. When speaking with them, if they gave him the indication they were interested and most did, such was his appeal as a musician and entertainer, he'd run his hand over their wrists and arms, and once the signals were received, he'd casually, sensually feel about to get a fuller picture,

and the flirting would continue and eventually off to bed they'd go. Ray Charles was just like any other musician, except that he wasn't. He was Ray Charles, a genius. Ray Charles had arrived. And at the moment, as the newly released modern sounds and country and western music was gloriously climbing the charts, Ray Charles' dual-engine Cessna airplane was making a horrifying descent.

16,000 feet, 15,000, 10, 9, 6,000 feet, 5,000, 3, 2,000 feet, 1,000 feet. Finally, the plane was just 250 feet above the ground and ready to land, but then, Air traffic control told them to bring the plane back up for a bit. They were at too low in altitude for their approach. Nothing out of the ordinary. Happened all the time. Ray relayed the message to his pilot, and the pilot pulled back on the yoke, and suddenly the plane wouldn't ascend.

There was no more lift. Ice from the snowstorm had frozen on and around the tiny plane and was weighing it down. The plane would only go in one direction. Down. Okay, it was bad, but not that bad. They'd simply circle the airport, calibrate their approach and put the plane down safely. And the pilot began circling. And that's when he looked up from his cockpit's instrument panel and out of the cockpit's front window to get a lay

of the land before touching down and what he saw was this. Nothing. The plane's windshield was completely frozen over. The pilot had forgotten to turn the windshield defrost on and now it was too late. But no amount of heat would melt this block of sheer ice on the windshield. And they couldn't see anything. The plane couldn't ascend. And they were going down. fast. Ray radioed into air traffic control. They had zero visibility for landing. Air traffic control told them they were going to have to figure something out. The pilot needed visibility for those final few feet to prevent drifting upon descent, to prevent crashing. The pilot was nervous. Ray could hear it in his voice. The rock journalist in the seat behind them started reciting Hail Mary's.

The pilot turned to his instrument panel to make his final turn back toward the landing strip. He couldn't see anything. Just ice. No flight time. No lights on the strip, no nothing. Ray Charles was literally flying blind. There was one certain outcome, defeat, death. But then, Ray Charles did what he'd done his whole life. Unable to see, he visualized where he wanted to be. On the ground, safe.

He didn't accept his so-called predetermined outcome because blindness had given him something few others had. True vision. Without sight, he literally could not see defeat. Sites that distracted others that played hold attention elsewhere, did not exist, and thus Ray Charles's imagination was given the freedom to manifest powerful outcomes unimaginable to others. Comparatively, Ray Charles wasn't blind, compared to most Ray Charles could see into the future. And in that moment, with his plane

fast approaching certain doom, with his pilot's nerves betraying him, with his passenger in the back spitting Hail Marys and pissing himself, Ray Charles visualized a different outcome, a safe landing. And lo and behold, with less than 100 feet above the ground, the pilot saw something himself, in the ice on the windshield, a pinprick of light, slowly expanding to the size of a quarter and then to a half dollar.

He leaned up, put his eye into the hole with his hand still on the controls, and with Ray Charles by his side, the pilot was able to use the vision in the hole in the ice gave him to see the landing strip and bring the plane down safely. When they landed, the pilot collapsed. The rock journalist passenger was convinced an actual miracle had happened that his Hail Marys had paid off. Air traffic control workers came out of their tower down to the plane to see for themselves what had happened. They couldn't believe what they were witnessing.

One tiny hole, of which only one eye could peer through, surrounded by solid ice on a plane completely frozen over. It was so improbable this tiny hole, this portal to salvation, but there it was. unexplainable. Except Ray Charles didn't need an explanation. This was nothing new for him, because though he was blind, he'd been seeing the improbable his whole life. There's two golden rules that any man should live by.

Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield and in this new season of the Girlfriends Oh my God, this is the same man A group of women discover

They've all dated the same prolific con artist I felt like I got hit by a truck I thought how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care So they take matters into their own hands I said oh hell no I vowed I will be his last target He's gonna get what he deserves

Listen to the Girlfriends Trust me babe On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie DeCercoe. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You from the Exactly Right Network.

Can I say something about the Criterion Clause? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film grape I got too. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form.

I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro.

And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air. So much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive

because I wasn't eating anything, and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The teenage boys on the city bus were staring at him, trying to muzzle their excitement.

It was coming up any minute now. Of the two Harlem natives, one of them was a skeptic, and his skepticism was about to make him pay. The bet was a quarter to see if the blind dude seated on the bus a couple rows down from them could do it. So they waited as the bus passed block after New York City block on its way down. town. And the boy who made the bet, the believer, knew it was coming up. Next stop. The bus chugged along at its normal speed, keeping pace with the bustling traffic. Any second now. Both boys were perched on the edge of their seat, waiting, anticipating, alternately believing and unbelieving at the same time. And there it was. The blind dude in his seat reached up with his right hand,

pulled down the bus stop lever indicating this was his stop, and the bus slowed itself over to the next stop, opened its door and let the blind dude out, whereupon he exited without a cane or a dog and made his way to wherever it was he was going on assistant. Payup. The losing boy couldn't believe it. He forked over his quarter. How did the blind dude know? How did he know which stop was his? The driver hadn't called out any stops or streets. There was no pre-recorded message announcing the bus's progress blaring over a PA. The bus just chugged along at a good clip. And the blind dude just knew where and when to make the bus stop. It was crazy, except that it really wasn't.

Ray Charles relied on his senses to get around. He could feel the bend and the dip of the road as the bus moved. It told him where to get off. He could sense it just like he could sense that Ahmed Erdogan, co-founder and president of Atlantic Records, knew what he was talking about. Ahmed had told Ray that if he only saw pennies, well, he'd see only pennies. But if he saw dollars, he in fact would eventually see dollars.

Ray believed this. In 1952, at the time Atlantic Records signed Ray Charles. This is what qualified as straight talk in the music industry. So Ray Charles considered himself lucky and went about doing his and Ahmed Erdogan's business, which at the time was making hits. His first few singles failed to set the world on fire. Ray was doing what he always did, his version of Matt King Cole. He'd sometimes spice it up with his version of Charles Brown.

That approach worked in the club. wouldn't work in the studio? The answer was because the record buying public didn't want another Nat King Cole or Charles Brown. They wanted something new. So Ray Charles hit the road. The road was tough, violent, Chitland Circuit roadhouses and dance halls,

shootings, stabbings, robberies, all manner of vice and grift. If you weren't careful on the road, you'd likely wind up off the road and in a hospital, a jail, or worse, the morgue. Beyond the Chitland Circuit, there were the occasional segregated shows in the South, when Ray was simply a hired gun.

There was little he could do about it, but later, when he fronted his own bands, Ray Charles wouldn't stand for it. At a headlining show on Augusta, Georgia, a promoter wanted blacks upstairs and whites downstairs. Ray insisted he was fine with segregation, if his loyal black audience could get the better downstairs seats. And the promoter refused and sued.

Ray paid $2,000 for breach of contract, A line had been drawn, but later Stan Dost would break the other way. What Ray could see was a vision of integrated audiences in the South. For the most part, when it came to negativity, the type of negativity that can be debilitating for a performer, it was easy for Ray Charles to block it out and concentrate on playing. He literally could not see the problems posed by road life. He could sense the danger knew how to steer clear of it,

but because he was blind. He was immune to the petty stuff. The nasty bits that drive the insecurity, the dirty looks and the attitude from the tough crowds, even the jealousy from drunk competitive alphas in the audience who worried about him stealing their dates. What was the little blind dude behind the piano going to actually do anyway? Sing their girls into the sack? That's exactly what happened. Usually an apartment held by the promoter where the band was allowed to shack up.

Sometimes a boarding house, maybe depending on what city they were in a hotel. but usually in an apartment where all manner of debauchery went down. Ray was in the John at the moment, getting down with what had become his daily ritual, shooting heroin. And there was no real reason, just what musicians did back then, especially the jazz musicians Ray revered, but jazz didn't have a monopoly on the horse, as Ray affectionately referred to it.

Blues musicians indulged as well, and Ray Charles developed a taste early, and he found his way to the drug while on the road with Lowell Fullst. band members were shooting up and Ray wanted to know what the attraction was. Nobody pushed it on him. Ray Charles went into heroin, clear-eyed, knowing full well the risk. He loved it. Heroin mellowed everything up, completely loosened him up.

It was like reefer, but a deeper, heavier groove. Ray's ritual had him shooting up every day to start his morning and then every night after the gig. Back in the early 50s, 20-rolled reefers ran Ray a five spot. And for another five, Ray could have had a bag of heroin to his weekly supply. Set him up, good. He'd score every week or so, or whenever they rolled through one of the bigger cities. But right now, at the after party and the John, Ray could hear the party on the other side of the bathroom door kicking up a notch.

Someone in the band put Duke Gellington's take the A train on the turntable. It was part joke, part Q, for the real train, the sex train, as in quote-unquote, running train. One of the more popular group sex tricks Ray and his band would partake with whatever eager local gals were willing and able to mix it up on whatever night they rolled through town. Ray fingered through his toiletries bag for his works. He wasn't missing out on anything. He was right where he wanted to be. The train wasn't his thing anyway. Ray liked group sex, but it had to be more than a bunch of drunk bandmates stumbling around an apartment naked to the Duke. Ray wanted it to mean something, to all involved, to really feel it. Heroin helped him really feel it, sex, music, whatever.

and then it would take it all away. Literally, heroin was good for obliterating whatever feelings physical or mental or ailing, Ray. But Ray also knew that if he wasn't careful, heroin would take him away as well, land him in jail and offstage for quite a long time. His first heroin bust was in 1955, a little bit of reaffir in heroin paraphernalia, a needle, a bird spoon, miraculously he got off easy. He was busted again in 1958 in Philly. The cops burst in without a warrant,

found his stash and collared him. Without a warrant, though, the cop's case was thrown out of court and Ray avoided jail. Nothing, not his arrest, his drug addiction or his blindness and seemed could keep Ray Charles from doing what his mother compelled him to do,

to be Ray Charles. He and Ahmed Erdogan got down to business. The Nat King Cole knockoffs wouldn't do. Ray had to dig deep, way down, into his soul, to find that big, scary thing inside of him that made him, well, him. The prospect of revealing one's true self to the world through art is to the artist terrifying, mainly because there is a high probability that your art, which is now quite literally you,

will be rejected. Most artists only have to deal with the prospect of the world rejecting their art, the thing they made, their album or song, or painting or whatever. True artists, original artists, artists who take the greatest risks, who don't image. who quite literally expressed themselves into a wholly new and original subjective creation, have to deal with the prospect of the world rejecting whatever it is they created, but also with the world rejecting who they are, because true artists are their art. The risk is massive, but so is the reward. Dollars, not pennies.

Ahmed Erdogan knew this and repeated it over and over again until Ray Charles knew it too. Because the prospect of expressing oneself honestly can not only be terrifying but also stifling, Ahmed Erdogan went one further and offered Ray Charles some lyrics to get him through the creative block, to provide just a touch of cover, to better help him reach down into himself and pull out something that was uniquely him. Ahmed's lyrics were simple, sexual double entendre, the mess around. Ray Charles knew about sex. It was just the spark he needed. He took Ahmed's simple lyrics and applied them to an old gospel tune he'd known since his days back in Greensville, Florida as a boy.

The melody might have been spiritual, but the music was blues and the feel was something new, something that hadn't been heard before, something totally unique. It wasn't just blues and it wasn't just rhythm. It was rhythm and it was blues. That familiar beloved gospel melody set over jumped up boogie-woogie. The spiritual swapped for the secular. The hint of sex. It was genius. It was Ray Charles.

mess around was a hit. Ray doubled down on his newfound combination of gospel and blues with the song, I've Got a Woman. The melody directly nicked from the gospel tune, it must be Jesus. It went straight to number two. He followed it up with this little girl of mine, a fool for you, drown in my own tears,

hallelujah, I love her so, all singles for Atlantic that traded on Ray's patented mix of gospel and blues, all of which charted and culminated in 1959, with the release of the single, What I Say. which went to number six on the Billboard chart, into number one on the R&B chart. But more than that, it was a classic in its own time. By the end of the 1950s,

the genius of Ray Charles was evident for all to see. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And Rule 2, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends...

Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care, so they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie to Cherokee. And I'm Casey O'Brien.

And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion Clause? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film, Great By Got 2. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes.

Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movie, we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network.

Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories

I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive head first into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything, and me pretending like everything was fine.

He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts, 1965. It was once called the asylum for the insane. But sometime back around the turn of the century, they dropped that name for something less literal, more inviting. So McLean Hospital, it was.

Ray Charles was cold and just his hospital gown. The room he was in was barren and freezing, not to mention slightly terrifying. Sites didn't freak Ray Charles out, but sounds, sounds could be downright horrific. The shrieks of terror coming from elsewhere in the hospital were so strong he himself could taste the tube of rubber, the one the orderly shoved in your mouth

to make sure you didn't bite your tongue off while they administered their electric shock treatments. The sound of the electricity joltz, the shake of the patient spasming on a metal chair, its feet sharply digging into the linoleum floor, was downright chilling, same as the room he was in, on purpose. The hospital was trying to freeze Ray Charles, the junkie out, except it wasn't working. For most junkies, trying to wean off of heroin, the cold helps speed withdrawals. But Ray Charles wasn't having withdrawals. He'd been there, done that. There was no weaning for him. He'd kicked cold turkey.

For the judge, that judge was a real motherfucker, and Ray knew his best chance at mercy was to kick heroin before the sentencing portion of his trial for his most recent bust. The one in Boston, a couple months prior. Logan Airfield, Ray's plane landed without incident after a performance in Canada. He and his bandmates exited and headed to the hotel. The bite in the Boston air was nastier than Ray was used to.

He was looking forward to a hot shower and the warm embrace of his fix, but when he got to his room, he realized he left his works on his plane. He had his assistant grab a cab, and the two headed back to Logan to his plane to grab his heroin. Ray Charles did just that. And then Ray Charles was grabbed by a pair of federal agents, Drug Squad. They'd been watching the notorious drugged-out musician, hip to his many previous arrests and champing at the bit to bring him down. The headlines alone would be worth it.

And headlines there were. Ray Charles busted again. for heroin. Ray's profile at the time was too damn big to keep his bust quiet. A loud arrest meant a loud trial, and a loud trial often meant a stiff sentence. Ray got hip, quick. He wasn't about to be made an example of. He wasn't about to do real time to become a cautionary tale,

something parents and music teachers tell their kids, stay off them drugs, you're going to end up in jail just like that Ray Charles. Fuck that. Ray hooked himself up with a top-notch attorney, Justice might have been blind like Ray Charles, but she wasn't cheap like Ray Charles. Ray ponied up the bread for the best attorney money could buy. Then he doubled down and shelled out the cash for a famous Viennese shrink. Frederick Hacker.

The good doctor would play nice in court with the judge. Ray checked himself into the Docs Beverly Hills Clinic and got down to the business of getting clean. No weeding. Just cold turkey. It was violent, painful, immensely distressing both physically and mentally, but Ray pulled through. As always, he had an image, a powerful image of himself in his head, future Ray, who he will become. This visualization was nothing new.

Visualization or manifestation, as it sometimes called, is a powerful tool that has been used by many of the world's biggest celebrities who visualize their success, the things they don't have and then manifest them. Oprah Winfrey is a forceful advocate of visualization, or as she calls it, the secret. having famously employed the tactic to land her career-making role in Stephen Spielberg's film The Color Purple. Jim Carrey, when he was a broke, struggling actor, wrote himself a $10 million check and kept it in his wallet, knowing that one day he would cash it. A decade later, he earned $10 million to star in Dumb and Dumber. Lady Gaga has long held a singular vision of herself. She reminds herself of that vision every day and regularly repeats various affirmations

to help keep her on her path toward realizing that vision of herself. And Will Smith is also a strong believer in visualization, saying, quote, the universe is not a thing that is going to push us around, that the world and people and situations are not things that are going to push us around. We are going to command and demand that the universe become what we wanted to be. And for Will Smith, of course, that meant becoming one of the biggest stars in the history of Hollywood.

For what it's worth, I too believe and have believed. believed in visualization going back to the months prior to launching this podcast. I had a vision of what I wanted it to become and still do, and that vision was, of course, closely aligned with who I wanted to become and now with who I am. I succeeded because I believed and I believed because the evidence for visualization is everywhere. Not only in the examples I just listed, but throughout history, especially in this country, in America, what men and women have achieved, the odds and circumstances as they overcame, odds and circumstances much more challenging than the ones I was facing.

At some point, as I got older and maybe a little smarter, it became clear to me that in this world, anything is possible, because the world is what we make of it. Outside distractions, people's opinions, their emotions, politics, whatever, we have the power to ignore it, to block out the noise and to choose something else, to make something else.

But first, we have to see it. Ray Charles saw it. right after he went blind, the vision of who he was to become. And a blind jailed junkie was not what he saw. A genre-melding musical genius powerful enough to bring black and white culture into one. That's how he saw himself. As big and talented and widely loved by audiences of any color as his hero not King Cole was before him as Frank Sinatra currently was,

this is who Ray Charles wanted to become. But to do that, he needed to kick heroin and impressed that damned judge in delaying a light sentence on him. So that's what he did. Kicked. Powered through the withdrawals, committed to the Shrinks program, and came out clean.

They had hauled him into McLean to test him to see if he'd relapse since the judge suspended his sentence. And if he had, he'd be shipped off to prison. He, of course, hadn't relapsed. No amount of cold air pumped into his barren hospital room was going to bring on heroin withdrawals because there was no longer any heroin in his system. He got off easy.

Five years probation with the freedom to travel and perform as a free man. Ray Charles bounded his plane for the next gig. The plane was making its descent. Every single passenger aboard knew they were going to die. Everything was happening so fast. And they'd just taken off from Boston some 40 minutes ago. Things got bad, quick. If death has a taste, it was in the mouth of everyone seated on Flight 11 that morning.

Hail Mary's tears soon as the plane speeded faster and faster toward its crash, screams. But then a glimmer of hope, and the plane jerked itself violently up, just a touch. And the passengers felt it for a moment, calm. They seemed to be cruising again. Maybe this wouldn't end in destruction. But then, another violent lurch, a gut-pulled. acceleration. The feel of the plane's nose dipped back down. It was slight but definitive. They were blazing through the sky again at an unimaginable speed. A death plunge if there ever was one.

More screams, more prayers, more... May God bless America, the beautiful, have been beat up. September 11, 2001 was unlike anything Ray Charles and the rest of the country had ever seen. It shook the country to its foundation. Ray had seen rallying presidential speeches before. He'd even met his fair share of presidents. He'd performed at Richard Nixon's White House, played at Ronald Reagan's inaugural, and at the 1984 Republican National Convention, and then at Bill Clinton's inaugural, too. He liked them all, despite their flaws. There were politicians, after all. And regardless of which party they were in or what they promised, Ray Charles knew that if he wanted something in this world, relying on a politician wasn't going to get him anywhere. He needed to rely

on himself. But this speech from George W. Bush was different. There he was, President of the United States, standing in the rubble of the Twin Towers, his arm around a fireman, speaking through a bullhorn to assembled first responders, cops, more firemen, EMTs, construction workers, all there doing the unthinkable work of digging American bodies out from the pulverized remains of cement, glass, plaster, office equipment, and everything else that was once the World Trade Center. There was no teleprompter. There was clearly no prepared pre-written speech. There was just emotion. The best kind, uncalculated, real, visceral. Somebody at the back of the gathered crowd yelled to the president, we can't hear you. George W. Bush improvises, I can hear you. The rest of the world

hears you. He believed in what he was saying. But on that day, Just three days from the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor in 1941, the rest of the country believed it too. It was one of those rare moments of consensus in America. It wouldn't last. Within weeks, America would begin siphoning itself off into familiar tribes, never wanting to let a good crisis go to waste. Republicans would eventually use the situation to grandly and disingenuously

reorganize their United States as imperialist ambitions in the Middle East. and Democrats would use the situation to consolidate obstruction for Bush's entire agenda. Both sides succeeded to varying degrees, and both sides also failed fantastically. You know, like they always do. But on that day, with the president down there with the people, down in the rubble, bullhorn in his hand, shouting from the heart like an impassioned southern preacher, Ray Charles saw hope, and he also saw himself as someone who could remind America of its beauty. By 2001, Ray Charles was somewhat of an American institution.

After kicking dope, he had rebounded with a number one hit on the R&B charts. The ironically titled Let's Go Get Stoned. But over the decades, in a discography now over 50 records long, his three number one hits and his two gold records barely scratched the surface of his influence on the music industry and pop culture in general. From Cola commercials to Blues Brothers cameos to current Hollywood talk of a biopic of his life, Ray Charles had become part of the fabric of Americana. So naturally, when America was hurting, Ray Charles wanted to help rally the country.

Like the president, Ray Charles knew about hope. He also knew about grit and resilience. Ray Charles was a symbol of resilience, a symbol of what you can become no matter where you come from, no matter how far down you are. And America at the moment was down. But Ray Charles, The blind kid from the Jim Crow South who'd never seen himself as anything but capable and equal was about to remind America of its beauty. October 28, 2001, Game 2 of the World Series, a series which was delayed because of the Al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center. Arizona, the hometown diamondbacks were up a game against the vaunted New York Yankees

who'd won the previous three World Series titles. The pre-game ceremony, Pact House, America on end. America on the brink. Ladies and gentlemen, to honor America with the singing of America the Beautiful, please welcome the man and his soul, Mr. Ray Charles. America the Beautiful. For a couple minutes there in 2001, the genius of Ray Charles had reimagined the Catherine Lee Batesong into a newfound national interest.

anthem. The emotion in the performance is chilling, hair-raising, with nearly 50,000 in attendance and 16 million watching at home, all keyed in to the same emotion. Hope. White, black, left, right, red, blue, Republican Democrat, none of it matters. There is a fusion that happens as Ray sings this song, a mass melding of oneness, of optimism, just weeks after a near-death blow. In Arizona, it's a phoenix rising a reminder of our collective resilience a reminder to never lose sight of not only who we are but perhaps more important of who we can become a reminder from a true visionary a blind visionary it's ray charles in body and spirit in soul genius i'm jake brennan and this is disgrace land Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.

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