Ray (2004) - Starring Jamie Foxx, Regina King, Kerry Washington, Richard Schiff, Aunjanue Ellis

Ray

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Starring: Jamie Foxx, Regina King, Kerry Washington, Richard Schiff, Aunjanue Ellis

Directed by: Taylor Hackford

Screenplay by: Taylor Hackford, James L. White

Release Date: October 29th, 2004

Running Time: 152 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for depiction of drug addiction, sexuality and some thematic elements.

Box Office: $75,305,995 (US total)

Studio: Universal Pictures

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But for a man who synthesized his struggles, pain and personal darkness as effectively as he incorporated a myriad of musical styles-Jazz, Rhythm & Blues, Rock and Roll, Gospel, Country & Western-into his art, the story reads much differently, transformed from a sequence of events and accomplishments into a compelling and ultimately inspiring journey of a one-of-a-kind genius with a distinct vision…who, along the way, gave the world a new way to hear.

Director Hackford (The Devil's Advocate, Dolores Claiborne, An Officer and a Gentleman)-who, along with producing partner STUART BENJAMIN (La Bamba, The Long Walk Home, Everybody's All-American), spent the last 15 years developing this story with Ray Charles-presents a well defined portrait of an artist who turned his personal encounters with darkness into a burning light. The story of Ray - that of an impoverished, blind child of the segregated South who went on to break down social and artistic barriers and change the history of American music - is the quintessentially American story of a man's fight to control his own destiny.

With Foxx assuming the title role in a performance of intensity, breadth and truth, Ray follows the most volatile period of Charles' career, which starts the moment this young, black, blind teenager courageously boards a Florida bus all alone and heads across the United States to hone his art in the happening Seattle jazz scene. From Ray's early struggles to be treated fairly and find his own path, to his discovery by Atlantic Records and subsequent meteoric rise to global fame, to his battles with addiction and his torrid love affairs, the journey of Ray leads not only forward but back to Ray's youth. For, even as he becomes one of his generation's greatest musical heroes, Ray must come to terms with the fifth year in his life when his brother George died and he began to lose his vision-a time that had an indelible effect on Ray's drive, emotions and immortal music.

Ray is a Universal Pictures and Bristol Bay Productions presentation of an Anvil Films Production, in association with Baldwin Entertainment. Jamie Foxx takes on the role of music icon Ray Charles and is joined by a diverse ensemble cast that includes KERRY WASHINGTON (The Human Stain, Against the Ropes) as Ray's loving wife Della; CLIFTON POWELL (Never Die Alone) as Ray's early musical partner and road manager Jeff Brown; HARRY LENNIX (The Matrix Revolutions) as Joe Adams, who took over the role of manager later in Ray's career; TERRENCE DASHON HOWARD (Biker Boyz) as Jazz guitarist Gossie McKee; LARENZ TATE (Why Do Fools Fall in Love) as the young Quincy Jones; RICHARD SCHIFF (The West Wing) and CURTIS ARMSTRONG (Dodgeball) as influential Atlantic Records executives Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun; BOKEEM WOODBINE (Detonator) as saxophonist David “Fathead” Newman; AUNJANUE ELLIS (Garden State) as Ray's backup vocalist Mary Ann Fisher; newcomer SHARON WARREN as Ray's hardworking and dedicated mother, Aretha Robinson; and REGINA KING (A Cinderella Story, Jerry Maguire) as Ray's girlfriend and powerful backup singer, Margie Hendricks. Ray is produced by TAYLOR HACKFORD, STUART BENJAMIN, HOWARD BALDWIN and KAREN BALDWIN. The story is by TAYLOR HACKFORD and JAMES L. WHITE, with a screenplay by JAMES L. WHITE. The film is directed by TAYLOR HACKFORFD.

To bring the vibrancy of Ray Charles' life and times to the screen, Taylor Hackford has also gathered a highly accomplished behind-the-camera team that includes director of photography PAWEL EDELMAN (Oscar®-nominated for The Pianist), production designer STEPHEN ALTMAN (Oscar® nominee for Gosford Park), editor PAUL HIRSCH (Oscar® winner for Star Wars), composer CRAIG ARMSTRONG (Golden Globe, AFI and BAFTA Award winner for Moulin Rouge!), music supervisor CURT SOBEL (The Insider) and costume designer SHAREN DAVIS (Antwone Fisher). The executive producers are WILLIAM J. IMMERMAN and JAIME RUCKER KING; the co-producers are RAY CHARLES ROBINSON, JR., ALISE BENJAMIN and NICK MORTON.

For many people, the birth of American Soul can be traced directly back to 1954 and the incendiary Atlantic Records single “I've Got a Woman,” performed by a rising young artist named Ray Charles. Mixing the Blues and Gospel in ways that had previously been taboo and mysteriously managing to merge sexual and spiritual, raw and tender, longing and lightness into one unforgettable, heart-pounding sound, the song literally shook the world. It was the catalyst that lit a fire in countless young musicians who'd never heard anything like it, and the spark that helped set off an explosively creative period in American culture that led to the rock `n' roll revolution and beyond…not to mention igniting Ray Charles' own 50-year career.

But just as amazing as the sound was the man from whom it emerged. The late musical legend Ray Charles has been dubbed “The Genius of Soul”-but what about the soul of the genius? While almost everyone knows and loves Ray Charles' music-which would grow to encompass and re-create nearly every uniquely American style from Jazz to Country-few know the real story behind his hard-fought journey to artistic triumph.

Ray Charles was not only a brilliant performer at his trademark piano, a savvy businessman who took unprecedented control of his career and a musical pioneer who forged a path for others to follow…but he was also a man in search of his own redemption. The same childhood tragedy that inspired Ray Charles to create so feverishly also haunted his every move until he was able to finally face his past.

Says Taylor Hackford: “Ray Charles' life was an absolutely fantastic journey. In this film I wanted to present the complexity of this American genius, warts and all. Ray had immense courage and brilliance, but his life also contained horrible tragedy and elusive demons. With Ray we have tried to show the evolution of an artist through an incredible period of cultural change. I hope people see through this film that Ray Charles is so much more than a musician of the past. He influenced a vibrant, cultural revolution in America that is still going on today.”

In an interview a few months before his death, Ray Charles said about the film: “I can see that Taylor's done his homework. He's got my life down pretty good. I would like for the people to understand the trials and tribulations that I've gone through from when I was a little kid up until I really got into my career and all the different things that happened to me over the years. I mean, I've had some wonderful things to happen to me, but yet I've had some pretty dramatic things to happen to me, too. I would like for people to know that you can recover from a lot of adversity that you might have in your life if you keep pressing on-if you still feel you know where you want to go. In other words, you don't give up just because you get knocked down a few times.”

Ray Charles was a man of uniquely American contradictions, a dichotomous blend of big-city savvy and back-country simplicity, of sincerity and guile, of shouts and whispers. He never liked labels or barriers of any kind, so his songs transcended genres, tapping into the whole wide range of American roots music and blurring the separations between Jazz, R&B, Country and Gospel to create something original, exuberant and moving. It was said that he could just as easily make you dance as break your heart, could evoke joy as deeply as desolation, and sometimes he did both in the same song. For Ray Charles, life itself was like that…full of pain, trouble and sorrows as well as exaltation, beauty and salvation.

Born into crushing, Depression-era poverty on September 23, 1930 in Albany, Georgia, Ray Charles Robinson fell in love with music at a very young age. He was exposed to both the call-and-response hymns of his Baptist church and the rough-and-tumble Blues of local musicians. Before he was five, he was already learning piano. Then, a series of tragic events altered the course of his life. First, Ray witnessed his brother George's drowning death in an accident for which Ray blamed himself. Shortly thereafter, a combination of glaucoma and the trauma of watching his brother die caused Ray to progressively lose his sight. By the age of seven he had gone completely blind and, at his tough but devoted mother's insistence, learned to navigate the world based on his acute sense of hearing and fascination with sound. He never used a cane, a dog or any other tool he associated with dependency. Instead, with his gifted, wide-open ears, Ray found his own way to approach life as a blind person. Through it all, music kept him going. Later, Charles would write in his book Brother Ray: “I was born with the music in me, that's the only explanation I know of.”

In the hopes of providing a better future for Ray, his mother sent him 160 miles away to the state school for the blind in St. Augustine, where Ray learned to read music in Braille, studied several instruments and soaked up the local Jazz, Swing, Gospel, Blues and Country scenes. Tragically, Ray's mother died while he was at the school for the blind and he was left alone in the world. Motivated by his mother's oft-expressed wish for him to become his own man, the teenaged Ray wasted no time. He began to score gigs in small clubs, dance halls and bars across northern Florida. He even played with a Country & Western band, The Florida Playboys. Life wasn't easy for a blind, inexperienced teen in this wild, rough-edged world, but Ray grew up fast.

In March of 1948, at age 17, Ray crossed the country alone on a Greyhound bus to make his way on the Seattle circuit as a piano player and smooth-voiced crooner in the tradition of Nat King Cole and Charles Brown. He quickly became successful enough in Seattle to land a record deal with Jack Lauderdale and his Swingtime Records label.

Ray recorded his first single for Swingtime Records in 1949. Lauderdale quickly put him on the road with R&B guitarist Lowell Fulson-but he was still basically an anonymous musician searching for his own original sound. And it was a lonely existence for Charles. Although he was recognized by the Fulson band as a talented musician, he was on his own much of the time on the road, spending a lot of hours alone in his hotel room. It was during this period of experimentation that Ray also discovered something else: heroin.

But his true breakthrough came in the early 1950s when Ray signed to Atlantic Records, recruited by upstart indie music executives Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler, who were scouting for new sounds. It was Ertegun and Wexler who put him on the road backing up the legendary “Miss Rhythm,” Ruth Brown. Soon, Ray began to try something considered highly controversial: mixing together the churchly passion of Gospel with the more earthly desires of the “devil's own music,” the Blues. The result was galvanizing-and so controversial that his early hits were banned by many radio stations.

Controversy or no, the power of his art was undeniable-just listening to Ray Charles stirred people's souls and created a following. Although it was a time when the phrase “race records” was used to refer to albums by African-Americans, Ray's genre-busting music appealed to a broad cross-section of both white and black listeners. In his own 1993 book, Jerry Wexler said of Ray Charles' genius: “Ray saw past categories and simply played what he felt.”

Now known simply as Ray Charles (he dropped his last name, Robinson, to avoid confusion with the popular boxer Sugar Ray Robinson), he released the ground-breaking “I've Got a Woman” in 1956, with its Blues-tinged lyric of desire set against a spiritual vibe. This was followed by a string of unforgettable smash hits, including “What'd I Say,” “Drown in My Own Tears,” “Unchain My Heart” and “Hit the Road Jack.” By his early 20s, Ray Charles was being described by those in the business with a word that was then rarely used: he was called “the genius.”

In 1959, Ray switched record labels, despite his devotion to Ertegun and Wexler (in fact, he would return to Atlantic many years later). He went to ABC-Paramount, lured by an irresistible deal that allowed him to own his masters. This groundbreaking deal gave Ray the kind of financial control that no musical artist had enjoyed up to that time. To his new label's shock, Ray Charles next shifted his style 180 degrees, embarking on an exploration of Country & Western music. Rather than alienate fans, however, he expanded his audience even farther with such classics as “Georgia on My Mind,” “I Can't Stop Loving You,” “Born to Lose” and “Busted.” Just when it seemed he'd reached the pinnacle of his career, Ray Charles soared higher. In 1966 Thomas Thompson wrote in his profile for Life Magazine: “The best Blues singer around? Of course, but don't stop there. He is also an unparalleled singer of Jazz, of Gospel, of Country and Western. He has drawn from each of these musical streams and made a river which he alone can navigate.”

It was also the 1960s that propelled Ray into becoming an activist for Civil Rights. Touring in the `50s he had learned to shrug off the pervasive presence of segregation and unjust treatment of African-American artists and audiences. But now he would become the first artist to boldly refuse to play in segregated clubs, a move that cost Ray a substantial amount of money and spurred the state of Georgia to ban him “for life.” (In 1977 the State of Georgia issued a formal apology to Ray Charles, the state legislature honored him and they declared “Georgia on My Mind” the official state song.)

Yet the 1960s also brought Ray Charles' chaotic life on the road to a head. His marriage was weakenedby by his continuing infidelities. Then, in 1965, he was busted for heroin possession flying into Boston's Logan Airport from Montreal. Recognizing that his addiction threatened the career and the music he held so dear, Ray decided to kick his two decades-long dependency on heroine and he checked himself into a rehabilitation hospital. No matter how strong the lure of heroin, Ray's desire to continue making music proved more powerful. He never touched heroin again.

In the wake of overcoming his addiction and facing his worst demons, Ray Charles resumed his career. He continued to tour, playing more than 200 concerts a year until liver disease finally slowed him down last year. In the 1970s he released one of his most enduring classics: a stirring re-working of “America the Beautiful” that gave the anthem a shot of heartfelt soul and sacrifice that seemed to make the song more powerful than ever.

Throughout his career, Ray Charles earned 12 Grammy Awards, as well as a 1988 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He placed 76 singles on the best-selling charts and recorded more than 75 albums. He was a Kennedy Center Honors recipient, received the National Medal of the Arts and was an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Blues Hall of Fame and the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame. Never forgetting his roots or the obstacles overcome in his triumphant career, Charles was responsible for raising more than $20 million for black charities, education and arts. Most of all, his influence can be heard nearly every time a song plays on the radio, as his musical inventiveness washed over generations of Rock, Soul, Jazz, Gospel and Country artists.

Like most people, director Taylor Hackford first encountered Ray Charles through the fervid emotion of the man's music. In the 1950s, Hackford recalls hearing “I've Got a Woman” for the first time and immediately being hooked by the soulful sound. “From the minute I first heard Ray Charles sing, I knew there was an extraordinary fire there,” says Hackford, “and I followed his career from then on.”

As Hackford watched Ray Charles develop and grow into one of America's essential musical voices, he also witnessed the culture around Ray shift and explode. “It became clear that Ray was doing something truly groundbreaking that was having a real effect on mainstream American society. So many artists were influenced by Ray Charles:, from Elvis Presley and BB King to Stevie Wonder and the Rolling Stones, and on to current stars such as Outkast, Alicia Keys, Norah Jones and Justin Timberlake. His place in the pantheon of culture is monumental,” notes Hackford.

Decades later, in the 1980s, Hackford was himself known not only as an accomplished director of such films as An Officer and a Gentleman, but as a filmmaker with a unique passion for the history of American music. He began his career with the musical The Idolmaker, and he went on to direct the acclaimed documentary Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock `n' Roll and produce the Ritchie Valens story, La Bamba, which became one of the first popular bios of an early rock-era legend.

Now, Hackford wanted to make a film about the man whose career had been inspiring him for so many years. It wasn't just Ray Charles' music that moved Hackford. It was also learning of the rags-to-riches story that lay behind Ray's success-a story filled with tragedy, adversity, prejudice and addiction, as well as genius, love, beauty and ultimately, the will to overcome. Hackford and his long-time producing partner Stuart Benjamin saw it as a deeply American story.

Says Hackford: “To really understand Ray Charles, the music is important, but there is so much more to the man. When I first heard the stories of his life, I thought, `My God, I never had any idea.' I did not realize how he came up, how he went blind, how he traveled on a Greyhound bus from Northern Florida to Seattle, how he got off that bus as a blind man on his own, experienced discrimination, addiction and sorrow-and yet found his way to become an incomparable artist, an incredible businessman and an American icon. I thought, `This man's story must be told.'”

Benjamin comments, “We had made the Ritchie Valens story, La Bamba, which told the story of this kid young Latino kid who came from nothing and got to be a starrose to stardom, if only for that brief moment. With Ray'shis story transcends musical periods and generations-it's the quintessential American success story. Ultimately, what got it made was our strong belief in the project. All the stars eventually came together at the right place and the right time.”

Hackford first met Charles in 1987 while trying to secure rights to his life story; their working relationship over the next 15 years left an indelible impression on the filmmaker. “He was a very gracious man yet also very tough,” recalls the director. “He was one of the smartest people I've ever met and he was also very, very candid. Of course, he was not an easy person, but nobody that accomplished is easy. Having overcome the monumental obstacles he'd faced in his life, Ray exuded a confidence that can only come from being a self-made man. He was also a perfectionist who demanded total concentration and dedication from others. And it was impossible not to be inspired by him.”

Following that first meeting, the filmmakers and Charles developed a bond of trust and soon Hackford and Benjamin were able to acquire the rights to the musician's life. Yet to their surprise, Hackford and Baldwin Benjamin would spend more than a decade trying to stir up interest in Hollywood. “Stuart really kept this project alive,” says Hackford. “He was very tenacious and just wouldn't let go. We always believed this film would strike a chord in audiences, and that it was just a matter of time. It is with great sadness that we faced Ray's death before the film could be released.”

Based on intensive and intimate personal interviews with Charles, covering subjects ranging from what it “feels like” to be blind to his complex relationship with his late mother and the brother he saw drown as a five-year-old, Hackford wrote a screen story for the film in the late `80s. He and Stuart Benjamin and Stuart Benjamin also used their extensive friendships in the music business-including such renowned Ray Charles collaborators as Ahmet Ertegun and Quincy Jones-to obtain first-hand insights into the man from friends and family.

“It was important to us, and it was also important to Ray, that he be accurately depicted, flaws and all,” says Benjamin. “We did not hold back, because if you don't show the downside then the upside is not quite as dynamicimpactful, or as real, and it only tells half the story. Ray Charles was not without vices, but part of what makes his story so powerful is that he overcame them when he came to the realization that they were threatening what he loved most in life.”

Throughout the entire process, Ray Charles was more than cooperative, insisting at every turn that the filmmakers never shy away from the darker parts of his reality. “Ray actually said, `You can tell any story you want and you can make me look any way you want, but I will not let you not tell the truth, because that wouldn't be right,'” explains Hackford.

Another key contributor to the project was Charles' son, Ray Charles Robinson, Jr., who became one of the film's executive producersco-producers. “Through all the years, and all the attempts at getting the film made, Ray Jr. stuck with it and he was able to keep us from losing heart and keep his father from losing heart. He has an incredible love and respect for his father,” says Benjamin, “and he also has a real understanding of his father's importance, not just to the musical world, but the world at large.”

As the project progressed, Hackford and Benjamin brought in screenwriter James L. White, who makes his feature film debut with Ray, to write the screenplay. “Jimmy had a lot in common with Ray's story,” explains Hackford. “He's from the South, he's African-American and he's had some painful moments in his life he's had to struggle with. He really understood and felt very strongly about Ray's story. He took what I had started and built on that, bringing out some emotional authenticity. His sharp ear for Ray's unique country flavored dialogue infused his first draft screenplay with a palpable authenticity.”

White conducted numerous interviews with Ray Charles and also spent endless hours with many of Ray's closest friends and family members, including his former wife and life-long confidante, Della. “The more I talked to people, the more I began to see what I was writing as a series of love stories,” says White. “It's about Ray's love for his brother who drowned, his love for his mother who inspired him, his love for Della and, most of all, his love for the music which saw him through these times and inspired so many people,” says White.

Hackford wanted to experiment with Ray's music as a major narrative element, so he strategically placed dozens of Charles' most evocative songs throughout White's script-not only to create rhythm and pace, but also to illustrate Ray's emotional state of mind when he created them.

When the script was complete, the filmmakers had it translated into Braille and delivered to Charles - then they waited nervously for the famous perfectionist's response. “He came back with only two changes,” recalls Hackford, “both factual, and neither of them having to do with the more controversial sides of his character. Ray turned out to be a fantastic person to work with. He was tough and demanding but what he demanded from us was nothing less than what he demanded from himself: a sense of excellence and commitment. What more can you ask for?”

At long last, when the project finally got off the ground, it was clear that Hackford was the only person who could direct it. Says producer Stuart Benjamin, “I don't think there could have been anyone else, because Taylor has such a deep understanding of all the things that made Ray Charles who he was-of not only his musical genus, but the hardships he endured and the charm, warmth and power of the man. He also knows better than anyone how to transform popular music into a cinematic storytelling. What Taylor has done is show that this is a story that transcends generations. It's a deeply human story.”

Once Ray was underway, the filmmakers were faced with a daunting question: where would they find an actor able to embody such a highly recognizable and unique character from American culture? The answer was an unexpected one. Hackford and Benjamin decided to take a chance on Jamie Foxx, best known at the time as a stand-up comic and television star, but also an actor with whom they'd been impressed by his performances in Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday and Michael Mann's Ali.

When he met with Foxx, Hackford told the actor his main concern was that whoever played Ray Charles would have to reveal an innate relationship to the very soul of music. As it turns out, Foxx, similar to Ray Charles, had started playing piano at age three. The actor later led the band at his Texas gospel church in his youth and received a university piano scholarship. “When Jamie told me this, I just kind of sat back and thought, `My God,'” remembers Hackford. “I'd like to say it was planned, but it wasn't. We got lucky.”

The next test was to have Foxx and Ray Charles meet - which they did at two side-by-side pianos, while the filmmakers held their breath. Hackford recalls the story: “Ray was not easy, as I've said, and when it came to music, he demanded perfection. Jamie came over and immediately started playing the piano and Ray could hear at least that he could play. So they started playing and Jamie is playing a little funk and Gospel, but then Ray goes into some Jazz, some Thelonious Monk. And I'm thinking, `Oh, no, Jamie doesn't know it.' Ray was saying, `Come on, man, it's this,' and he keeps playing this Monk phrase, only Jamie is not getting it. Then Ray gets even tougher, saying, `Come on, man, it's right under your fingers.' And I'm thinking, `This could really blow up in my face.' But when Jamie finally got it, Ray, who had been pretty tough on him, said, `This is it. This kid can do it, see? He's the one.'”

Foxx had known little about Ray Charles beyond his music before being cast in the role, and found himself on his own personal journey into the man's fascinating and embattled background. “When I read the script I realized that this was a really phenomenal story, not just about music, but abut a man who overcame all kinds of difficulties to become a real leader of the culture. The way he intertwined everything he experienced in his life to make this amazing music, it was really something special.”

Foxx threw himself headlong into the role. After meeting with Charles, Foxx began by adapting many of the singer's physical trademarks, from his close-cropped hair to his bodily mannerisms, born out of a combination of Charles' history, blindness and unstoppable inner sense of music. The actor immersed himself in Soul, Jazz and Blues recordings to set the mood; attended classes at the Braille Institute; and spent weeks during rehearsal and production walking around with his eyes sealed tight for 12 hours a day, to gain an intimate understanding of what it really means be blind. “It was interesting to me that not being able to see made me angry at first,” comments Foxx. “It's frustrating. But I also noticed my sense of hearing becoming more acute, and I became sensitive to all kinds of sounds nobody else was even hearing.”

Many on the set where stunned by how spontaneous and natural the actor's embodiment of Charles became. But imitation was never the point. “The key word for me was nuance, because I didn't want to simply impersonate him,” says Foxx. “Rather, I wanted to capture some part of his spirit, that's all. There were a lot of little touches which I tried to layer-his musicality, his warmth, his sense of balance, his posture-until the physical side of things all fell into place.”

To get even deeper into the soul of Ray Charles, Foxx began to consider the extreme highs and lows of his emotional life. Foxx calls Ray Charles' childhood “a blessed curse,” an intense time of suffering that nevertheless marked the beginning of his development as an extremely open-minded artist. He says, “To a certain degree, I believe what happened to Ray as a child is what molded who he was, but it was a large price to pay. Yet, what is so amazing about him is that he never gave up. Instead, he said, `I don't want to be poor, black and blind, so I'm going to take control and make my life happen.' His decisions were always completely clear, there was no wavering, because he didn't have time to go backward.”

It shocked Foxx to think about how much drive it must have required to make it in a world that held forth obstacles of every kind-whether based on his race, his blindness or his initially lowly status as a backup musician. “What really amazed me is Ray's business savvy. To be blind, and to have to trust other people's word to a certain degree when it came to money and contracts, yet to control your own career in an era when nobody controlled their own career…wow. I came to see that Ray had a certain type of energy and charisma that really inspired people to be loyal to him and stay in his good graces,” says Foxx.

Foxx was also moved by the love story behind Ray Charles' early career with his devoted wife Della, who saw him through his darkest hours-despite his infamous knack for seducing women he met on the road-and pushed him to face up to both his talent and the devils chasing him. “I know Della really loved Ray and vice versa. Early on, she must have said to herself, `I'm going to love this man in spite of anything he does,' and she did. She was really a strong woman, and she held everything together and, in a way, I think she allowed Ray to be the artist he was,” says Foxx. “She was the glue in his life. Despite everything he did, I'm certain deep down inside Ray knew he had the greatest woman.”

The more he reflected on Ray's tough reality and propulsive talent, the more Foxx understood why Charles indulged in so many illicit activities. “He lived in a very unpredictable word and there were only a few things he could count on,” explains Foxx. “He could count on music, he could count on sex and he could count on heroin. He went with the things that he knew could bring him satisfaction until he saw he was hurting the people he loved.”

Despite the challenges of playing the many sides of Ray Charles, Foxx found an indescribable joy in the role, especially in trying to get to the bottom of Charles' life-loving, hard-driving energy. “You hear it in all those great songs,” says Foxx. “Now, I look at Ray Charles' legacy and I realize that he was so necessary…necessary for all of this music he helped create, for all the inspiration he brought, for the moment he carved out of history. He left behind a real mark and it's exciting to have gotten to know him as I did.”

Ray Charles was excited to be portrayed by Foxx. In an interview before his death, he said: “I can't believe how good [Foxx] is. I've had a couple of people who saw him work and they came back and said, `Ray, you just won't believe this guy! He's got you down so pat that he even walks like you! He does everything exactly like you.' I only go by my personal experience with him and I think he's phenomenal. He's a wonderful man.”

It was said that the only time Ray Charles acted blind was when he was around a beautiful woman. His gift for seduction and romantic escapades were legendary; yet women also played a major role in shaping the man he was and the man he would become. Four of these women are at the center of Ray: Della Bea Robinson, Ray's devoted wife, played by Kerry Washington; Margie Hendricks, the fiery vocal legend from the Raelettes (so named, it was said, because to become one, the women had to “let Ray”), portrayed by Regina King; Mary Ann Fisher, played by Aunjanue Ellis, the Kentucky singer who was also known as the “Queen of Blues” before and after her she ingtoured with Charles in the mid-1950s; and Ray's beloved mother Aretha, a role taken by Sharon Warren, making her screen debut.

When Kerry Washington read the screenplay for Ray, she realized she barely knew the man whose music she had adored throughout her life. She was especially moved by his relationship with “Della Bea,” a former Gospel singer who inspired Ray early in his career and stood behind him through fame, controversy and even addiction-until his lifestyle began to threaten their family. “Della accompanied Ray on this whole incredible journey from having not very much money to overwhelming wealth and popularity,” notes Washington. “She loved him and believed so strongly in his gifts, but there also came a point when she realized she couldn't be with a man who was destroying himself.”

For Taylor Hackford, Washington was the perfect choice for the role of the woman who was Ray's foundation and inner strength for many years. “Kerry captured Della's sweetness and vulnerability but also showed how she became a real rock of a woman,” he states. “Kerry has such an innocent, bright-eyed look, but when you see her go through so much pain and trouble, you see how she becomes the only person who could really talk to Ray.”

Washington met with the real “Mrs. Robinson” as part of her preparation. “Mrs. Robinson's a remarkably non-judgmental person,” observes the actress. “She said to me: `I don't like broccoli, so I don't want anybody to tell me to eat broccoli, and that's why I didn't go around telling people not to drink or do drugs, because everybody makes their own choices, everybody has their own journey.' I saw that she was a very independent and strong woman, and also a very spiritual woman who made difficult choices. I think she loved Ray as much as she could until she saw that this love was taking away from her ability to love herself and her family.”

Once on the set, Washington found that working with Jamie Foxx brought new dimensions to her character. “Jamie turned out to be so talented and committed,” she says. “The scenes we had together were very special because they were so intimate. When Ray was with Della he was able to really show his soul, the essence of who he was, and Jamie did that so gracefully and beautifully, it made it easy for me to respond emotionally.”

She summarizes: “To me the story of Ray is about people learning to embrace their own gifts. For Della, it's about learning to love herself as much as she loves Ray, and for Ray it's about forgiving himself enough to stop running from his demons. I think it's an important message-and behind it all is the power of Ray's music. I now own every single Ray Charles CD ever made!”

Regina King had a very different challenge in playing another of Ray Charles' influential lovers: his mistress and tremendous singing talent in her own right, Margie Hendricks, who tragically passed away of a drug overdose after she had left the Raelettes. Hendricks had started out in the `50s all-girl backup band known as The Cookies, but soon added a magic touch to Ray's 1960s recordings, counter-pointing Ray's mischievous baritone with her own evocative, belted voice.

“There's very little written about Margie,” notes King, “which is pretty amazing because she had one of the most unique voices ever in American music. I think in many ways she was Ray's Muse. He heard in her voice that church-like sound that inspired him to mix his own Blues into it and create something new. When I read the script and remembered her voice, I knew I wanted to play her because there is something very powerful and real about her.”

Margie's attraction to Ray, and Ray's attraction to Margie, had everything to do with the music, says King. “Their passion for the music is what brought them together and kept them together as long as they were, but they were both reckless people back then, and when she started to drink their relationship burnt out. Yet I think he really loved her-he was a human being like the rest of us, brilliant as he was-and she was an important part of his life.”

Taylor Hackford was impressed with how King brought the role of a woman few really know so richly to life. “Regina bowls you over in the same way that Margie Hendricks must have bowled people over. As an actress, Regina is better known for her fun, comic personality but here, she gets down; she's earthy and tragic and I thought her performance was fantastic.”

Mary Ann Fisher-who, according to Charles' autobiography, served as his inspiration for the songs “Mary Ann,” “What Would I Do Without You” and “Leave My Woman Alone”-joined Ray on tour in 1955 and performed vocals in the act even after the 1957 addition of the Raelettes; she left the band (and her romance with Charles) in 1958.

“One of the things I found really interesting about Mary Ann,” supplies Aunjanue Ellis, who portrays her, “was that her involvement in Ray's life and his music played an influential role. She was there just when his sound began to expand to include female vocals-and also when his attentions began to veer away from his wife and marriage. She was one of the first talented singers whose life and art became professionally and personally intertwined with Ray's.”

But perhaps the woman who most weighed on Ray Charles' mind throughout his life was his mother, who would not allow her son to get discouraged by his blindness for even a second. , whoShe once told him, “You're blind, not dumb; you lost your sight, not your mind.” Taking on the role of Aretha Robinson is actress Sharon Warren, who prior to being cast in Ray had worked primarily in Southern regional theater.

Hackford remembers the serendipitous nature of casting the woman who would bring Ray's mother to life and says, “During our search to find an actor to play the young Ray, a woman walked into our office in Atlanta, Georgia. She had a headshot, but she didn't even know what movie we were making. She had a lot of charisma, a lot of energy. I gave her a couple of pages of dialogue, she looked at it for 15 minutes, and then I put her on tape. While we were taping, I thought, `My God, this is Aretha.' I hadn't been able to find an actress who could embody what Ray Charles told me his mother was-a bone-thin person who had died when she was 31, but who had incredible fierceness of spirit, incredible strength. He gave her credit for who he was in life. He said, `This was the most important person in my life.' That's a heady recipe to have to satisfy. And Sharon Warren walked in off the street-that is a Cinderella story.”

Hackford had later played a scene for Charles involving Warren, where the words scripted for the actress had come directly from Charles' memory of Aretha. He says, “He was listening in his inscrutable way, and then he started talking to the screen, saying, `Yes, that's right. That's the truth.'”

Warren dove into the role by doing as much research as was possible into a woman who died, tragically and anonymously, in her early 30s. “The greatest help I received in creating this character was my 87-year-old grandmother, Annie Lou Gould Walker, who shared her life stories about the rural South during those times. Unfortunately, my grandmother died just before I began working on Ray. I am also eternally grateful to Ray Charles, Jr. for the intimate portrait he shared with me of his grandmother and her life. I also gained great insights from screenwriter James L. White and valuable advice from director Taylor Hackford.

“Aretha's history is very mysterious,” she comments. “What we do know is that she was very, very poor and very frail. She washed clothes to make money because that's the only thing she could do. She worked hard to provide for her children, because she loved them. When she lost George and Ray went blind, she still did not give up. She was determined to prepare Ray to take care of himself, despite his blindness.”

Warren continues: “She demonstrated `tough love' for Ray because she knew that, if he was going to survive in the world, he was going to have to be extremely strong. She knew what it was like to be an outcast, to be seen as a cripple and she didn't want that for her son. The more I thought about her and what she went through, the more I wanted to give as authentic and powerful a performance as I could, so this woman would be known to the world.”

Ray Charles was surrounded by numerous talented and ambitious people who helped to bring his genius to the fore, and in the making of Ray, this required assembling a diverse cast of charismatic actors. Among the list of Ray's most important friends and associates were two men who served as his managers: his friend Jeff Brown, played by renowned character actor Clifton Powell, who became his road manager on the Chitlin Circuit and saw him through his early success; and the man who would controversially replace Brown, the suave Joe Adams, who became Ray Charles' manager for the next 40-some years and is played by frequent Spike Lee collaborator Harry Lennix.

For Taylor Hackford, snaring Clifton Powell to play Jeff Brown was a key casting coup. “Clifton Powell is a fabulous actor,” he notes, “and he really embodies this character. Through Clifton's performance you get a real sense of these two guys who are just starting out in a music business that was often very unfair. Jeff is a witness to how many people underestimated Ray Charles' talent, intelligence and ambition in those early days.”

To play Joe Adams, whose smooth sophistication replaced the old school style of management Ray was used to, Hackford chose Harry Lennix, who remembers seeing Ray Charles play Carnegie Hall when he was in college. “It was one of those magical nights,” he recalls. “Unforgettable.”

Lennix found the role to be a kind of trip into history, as he met with the real Joe Adams and learned up-close what it was like to be an ambitious African-American in that era. “Joe was kind of a renaissance man,” Lennix observes. “He's from Watts, but he has a real debonair quality to him. He was an actor in the `50s who traded roles with Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte; he was a Tuskegee airman; he was the first black DJ to be broadcast from coast to coast. He's just a fascinating guy.”

Also among the fascinating real-life characters portrayed in Ray are the legendary Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records, the upstart indie which became the premiere Rhythm and Blues label in the `50s and the nation's leading Soul label in the `60s. Ertegun, a Turkish immigrant, not only helped to bring Ray Charles to the mainstream but was involved in the early success of Ruth Brown, Big Joe Turner, The Drifters and The Coasters. Later, he would helm Atlantic in the `60s and `70s as the company oversaw acts ranging from Aretha Franklin to Led Zeppelin. To play him, the filmmakers chose character actor Curtis Armstrong, who has himself produced several CD reissues of Harry Nilsson's work and who was also forced to shave his thick, black hair to embody the balding Ertegun.

Once Armstrong began to learn about Ertegun's past, it all seemed worth it to play this legend of modern recording history. “The more I heard about him, the more intrigued I became,” says Armstrong. “Ahmet was a hard-headed, ruthless businessman, but he was also a talented music man. The relationship he developed with Ray was really beautiful because Ahmet was very much like a mentor to him. He saw that spark in Ray and, perhaps most important of all, he gave him the freedom to really let go and discover what was inside him. He wasn't afraid to label Ray a genius, because that's what he was. Even after Ray went to ABC, Ahmet and Ray remained good friends, because there was too much affection and respect between them.”

Jerry Wexler joined Atlantic in 1953 as one of the industry's first name producers. In addition to Ray Charles, he worked with Aretha Franklin, Wilson Picket, LaVern Baker, Dr. John, Dusty Springfield and Bob Dylan, among others. In the role of Wexler, Richard Schiff, best known to audiences as Toby Ziegler on The West Wing, hoped to capture his unique combination of street smarts and musical knowledge. “In those days, Wexler and Ertegun were really pioneers, they were explorers, they were figuring it out as they went along, but what they shared was a real love for music,” says Schiff. “When I talked with Jerry, he told me that those were the happiest days of his life, and I wanted to do that justice.”

Also portrayed in Ray are a number of famous musicians, most notably the legendary jazz artist Quincy Jones, played as a young and hungry trumpeter by Larenz Tate. Tate previously had starred as `50s doo-wop legend Frankie Lymon in Why Do Fools Fall in Love, and he was excited to take another excursion into real musical history. For Tate, the role presented a rare opportunity to get to know the iconic Quincy Jones personally. “I think it's amazing that these two legends, Quincy Jones and Ray Charles, were actually friends as young men before either one was famous,” says Tate. “When I met with Quincy, he shared with me that they had stayed close and loved one another for 55 years. It's just extraordinary and I was just happy to be a part of telling this story.”

In a case of art imitating real life, it turns out that Tate and Jamie Foxx are themselves close friends. “I keep telling Jamie, I expect my phone to keep ringing for the next 55 years,” he jokes. “But to already have that camaraderie made it easy for Jamie and me on the set. To be playing legends-it doesn't get any better than that-and to see Jamie literally become Ray Charles before our eyes, it's been an amazing experience. The way I see it, people like Ray Charles and Quincy Jones paved the way for guys like myself and Jamie. There were no roads and they paved them for us. Mostly I feel grateful to these guys.”

Rounding out the cast are a number of actors starring as real-life musicians, including NAACP Image Award winner Terrence Dashon Howard as Jazz guitarist Gossie McKee; Bokeem Woodbine as noted Jazz musician David “Fathead” Newman; Chris Thomas King as West Coast Blues-man Lowell Fulson; and David Krumholtz as Jazz impresario Milt Shaw.

After casting, one of Ray's biggest challenges was bringing to life the world that surrounded Ray Charles…from his dirt-poor upbringing in the South to the wild and sweaty Chitlin Circuit clubs he toured as a young man to the state-of-the-art `60s studio he created for himself in Los Angeles. With a story that spans the 1930s to the 1970s, Taylor Hackford and Stuart Benjamin knew they would need a very creative and devoted design team.

Says Benjamin: “This film crosses several decades in American history and deals with several real-life cultural icons, so it was important to us to capture the spirit of each of those times as accurately as possible. The production design, the costumes, even the vintage cars and instruments became very important to us.”

The decision was made to shoot much of the film in one of America's most musical cities, New Orleans, long home to Jazz and Blues innovators, despite the fact that the action takes place in cities ranging from Seattle to New York to Atlanta. With its fresh, rarely used locations and deep connection to the history of music in America, New Orleans provided its own inspiration to the crew.

“New Orleans is the most musically evocative city in America,” says Hackford. “I've owned a home there for 20 years, and it still amazes me. Not only is it the birthplace of Jazz, but it still produces some of the greatest musicians in the world. Ray Charles spent a lot of time there early in his career and he was deeply influenced by the city's R&B horn stylings. He produced his first million-selling record in New Orleans-Guitar Slim's `The Things That I Used To Do.' So even though we used New Orleans to create different cities all over the country, we had that sense of always being in a place that is all about the music.”

For production designer Stephen Altman, an Oscar® nominee for his designs for Gosford Park, Ray was a chance to do something unlike anything he'd done before. “My main goal on every film I do is to make sure my movies don't look like any other movies I've seen,” states Altman. “New Orleans helped me to keep the look of the film original.”

Altman wanted to infuse Ray with authentic realism but quickly discovered that many of the clubs and theatres Ray Charles played in his early career were never even photographed-and Charles himself, of course, never “saw” them. “We did as much research as we could into how clubs in that era were furnished and decorated, what the bands looked like on stage, but we also used imagination,” admits Altman. “Most of all, we wanted to capture the spirit of sensuality and freedom that flourished in these clubs.”

To do this, Hackford, Altman and costume designer Sharen Davis all agreed that the look of the film should be summed up in one key word: vibrant. They wanted rich colors and strong textures throughout to emphasize the passionate, sensual nature of Ray's music and his turbulent inner and outer worlds.

Because Ray was made on a limited budget, Altman didn't have the financial resources to recreate the myriad locations around the world where Ray had lived and performed. Therefore, he and Hackford devised a plan to utilize historical stock footage throughout the film to establish “master shots” of period scope and detail which could otherwise have not been created within the film's budget. Stock shots of such cities as Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Paris and Rome featured incredible added production values-hundreds of historical buildings, thousands of period cards and product billboards. Says Hackford: “Our strategy was to establish each major location with stock shots and then cut into smaller, more contained sets and locations in New Orleans that Steve had designed to integrate with the original footage. As you can imagine, we did major research in advance in order to find the right historical footage that Steve could match to.”

Obviously, some of this stock footage was of extremely poor quality, but advances in digital processing allowed filmmakers to clean up damaged or faded film and transform it into cinematic acceptability. “We `stepped on' [photographically degraded] some our own footage,” says Hackford, “so that the transitions in and out of these stock shots would be less noticeable.”

Altman used approximately two-thirds real locations, one-third soundstage sets, the latter giving his team the advantage of being easily shifted from one decade's styles to the next. Among the authentic locations utilized was Los Angeles' RPM Studios on Washington Boulevard, which Ray Charles himself founded in the 1960s and would serve as his business headquarters for the rest of his life. “It was a thrill to shoot there, but we had to do quite a bit of work to de-modernize it,” says Altman. “Everything changes so fast in the music industry and we had to bring the studio back in time.” Other locations included two historic New Orleans theaters: the turn of the century Orpheum Theatre and the Roman statue-lined Saenger Theater, built in 1927. In Los Angeles, the production shot the exterior of Ray's first California house, near the Coliseum, on Hepburn Street, and both the interior and exterior of Ray's mansion in View Park.

Throughout his work on Ray, Altman collaborated closely with Taylor Hackford and also Pawel Edelman, the film's Polish director of photography best known in the U.S. for his evocative, Oscar®-nominated work on Roman Polanski's The Pianist. “Pawel brought a real artistic eye to everything,” comments Altman.

Adds Taylor, “I'd seen Pavel's work in Poland where he'd collaborated with one of my favorite directors, Andrzej Wajda. Like most of us, Pavel had been a huge Ray Charles fan growing up, but unlike the rest of us, he'd had to scrounge for `underground' copies of Ray's records in Poland.”

Hackford and Edelman spent many hours discussing the “photographic looks” of Ray, because Hackford wanted different visualizations for each of the three separate levels of reality in the film: first, the Linear Story that follows Ray's evolution as an artist; second, Ray's Flashbacks that show actual events in his childhood; and third, Ray's Visions of Aretha, which are psychological dream/nightmares of his mother speaking to him at crucial life moments.

“Usually, filmmakers will photograph their linear, `real time' sequences in natural colors and then de-saturate or mute their flashbacks,” supplies Hackford. “We reversed that equation, deciding to use a de-saturated bleach bypass for the Linear Story and go with a natural color look for the Flashbacks. Actually, even our `natural colors' were ultra-saturated…almost hyper-real. Remember, Ray was born sighted, so I wanted to communicate how vibrant the colors must have seemed to him on his first Spring day.”

Hackford and Edelman also worked out a strategy for camera movement. In the Flashbacks, the only world that little Ray knew was Jellyroll, so his life is totally stable; thus, there is very little camera movement in those scenes, the camera appearing almost rooted in the red earth of Georgia. However, when Ray gets on that Greyhound bus and travels across America, the camera starts moving and never stops…just like his life.

Hackford explains, “In the early scenes we used dollies and cranes, which provided smooth, steady movement. Then, when Ray meets and marries Della, the camera temporarily slows down, because she provided stability for him. However, as Ray's ambition/ego heats up, and his use of heroin accelerates, we switched to a hand-held camera style to show the increasing instability in his life. At the end of the film, when Ray kicks heroin and resolves his relationship with his mother and brother, the camera finally slows down and stops.”

Costume designer Sharen Davis also contributed to the re-creation of an American past that hasn't often been depicted on-screen. She began her work by poring over photographs of Ray Charles and other musicians on the Chitlin Circuit and beyond as styles morphed radically between the `40s and `70s. Though Ray himself was never a flashy dresser (his early “uniform” was a suit and bow tie), the Raelettes brought in more pizzazz; Davis took that one step further. “I used the original silhouettes of their costumes and enhanced the colors to make them pop even more,” she explains.

As Ray becomes more successful, his fashions expand into the colorful tuxes that became his trademark in the `60s and `70s; the Raelettes also become freer. “In the beginning, the Raelettes dressed very prim and proper because that's what Ray wanted. He didn't want them to be seen as sex kittens, but as something more classy. We made them just a little sexier by bringing down the necklines a little and making the dresses more form-fitting.”

David Davis was fascinated to discover that Ray Charles numbered all of his clothing so he would always be able to dress himself. She also learned that the one thing that really mattered to him was fit. “It makes sense that the one thing he could really tell was the feeling of the clothes on him, so he always insisted that things fit him perfectly. To accurately depict this, almost every piece of clothing was custom-tailored to fit Jamie Foxx, because that's how Ray really did it.” In the end, Davis would get to know Jamie Foxx quite well, simply because he had more than 100 costume changes during the production! And, usually, his outfits were completed by a one of several dozen pairs of Ray Charles' trademark wrap-around sunglasses.

For Kerry Washington's Della Robinson, Sharen Davis created a variation on the “Happy Homemaker,” dressing her in sweet, candy-colored pastels, and then changing her outfits as Della grows wiser and stronger. “Della is usually either pregnant or in the house. She's never out on the road, so there is a domestic quality to her character,” observes Davis. David“But then, by the 1960s, when she has more money, you can see her style change a bit. Suddenly, she's wearing jewels and very tailored outfits. But she's never, ever gaudy.”

Margie Hendricks, on the other hand, is “bright and wild and dripping with jewels.” Says Davis, “DavidMargie is never subtle and she always looks like she's ready to go out on the town. She also wears pants, which was a very bold fashion statement for women in that era, but she was a very strong woman.”

As she worked, Davis found a surprisingly close collaborator in Taylor Hackford. “Taylor is that rare sort of person who notices absolutely everything,” she says. “Right down to a sock or a purse, he would be able to say exactly what he wanted and what did and didn't work. I learned so much working with him.”

To complete the look of the actors, creative makeup was essential. It was an especially major component of turning Jamie Foxx into a close approximation of a blind Ray Charles. Foxx's extensive, hour-long daily makeup routine involved, among other things, having uncomfortable prosthetics applied to his eyes for 12-hour days. Explains LaLette Littlejohn, key makeup artist, “Ray Charles had one eye essentially sewn shut and the other, though blind, was left open. So we tried to create this look for Jamie, with his right eye glued and his left eye partially closed, which was very difficult for him. It actually made him a little seasick, because his equilibrium was off. But it also helped him to learn how to feel his body movement in a whole different way which was essential to becoming Ray Charles.”

Filmmakers felt strongly that the visual style of the filmic storytelling should echo not only the great artist's music, but also “some of the themes and feelings not easily expressed in words,” according to Oscar®-winning editor Paul Hirsch. He continues, “This film gave us many opportunities for a poetic level of visual images-the bottle tree, the sheets, memories from Ray's childhood when he could see. What you see on the screen is in the script; the interweaving of songs and scenes is by design. That was not something that Taylor and I created in the editing room, because it was planned even before shooting. What we did do was use our transitions in interesting ways. I'd say we used fade in/fade outs more than in most films today. There are several instances where we fade in only after the scene has begun, with voices in darkness, which subliminally gives the feeling of blindness.”

With Hackford shooting on location, Hirsch was not able to view dailies. Instead, the director delivered the film to Hirsch (their first-time collaboration), who says, “He turned me loose with absolute freedom from the beginning. I asked how he preferred to shoot and learned that he's the type of director who knows what he wants and works toward that without stopping until he gets it-so I knew the shot he was going for was generally going to be one of the last takes. Taylor's intentions are quite specific in each scene and were easy to see. As an editor, I like to take first whack at a cut and present it to the director; then, we make changes to bring it in alignment with the sensibilities of the director.

“You only get one opportunity to see a picture for the first time,” continues the editor. “It's my goal to make the experience for the director a good one, presenting as polished a cut as possible. I aim for something better than `rough,' like if I feel the scene needs scoring, I'll put something in-obviously, that wasn't necessary on Ray.”

Hirsch delivered his cut to Hackford four weeks after principal photography wrapped. After viewing, the two spent months in the editing room to refine the cuts. Hirsch comments that since the film was (initially) an independent feature film, “Taylor and I were the only ones in the editing room and we cut the picture without any other input-which I think is the best scenario possible.”

“Paul came on the picture late,” says Hackford, “about a month into the shoot, which is quite unusual. I'd never worked with him before and had selected him because of his resume, which included some great films. He flew to New Orleans and we spent the entire weekend talking about my vision of the picture. Then he went back to Los Angeles and started cutting. Three months later when I sat down to watch his editor's cut I had some trepidation, but after a couple of minutes I totally relaxed-he'd done a fantastic job. It's uncanny how accurately he read my intentions. Working with him over the next several months was a total joy.”

The very heart and soul of telling Ray Charles' story had to be his music, which is why Taylor Hackford decided to evoke the emotions and events of Ray's life as much as possible through the power of his songs. From the beginning, Hackford had made a list of the key songs he wanted to appear in the film. These included:

I Got a Woman: The song that propelled Ray Charles to fame and forever altered the future of music by melding sacred Gospel to secular R&B and defining a new form called “Soul.” The song drew the attention of Elvis Presley when it hit the 1955 R&B charts. It also brewed controversy over the blasphemy of using ecstatic Gospel phrasings in a song about desire.

What'd I Say: For many, the definitive Ray Charles sound was captured on this 1959 hit, which showcased Ray on electric piano and was driven by a moaning call-and-response vocal that was pure primal sensuality. The song was at first banned by some radio stations, but in 2003, the Library of Congress chose to preserve this song as one of the most significant American recordings.

Says Taylor Hackford: “Musically, this film was a very complicated piece. We were using some 40 different songs throughout the film, and using them to tell a story, so when the music ends, the mood is carried over and vice versa. When a song is on-screen, you're seeing that the song came from the emotion and the drama in his life and that the two are necessarily intertwined and related.”

To help with the task of recreating Ray Charles' music with all the vitality and electric vibrancy it had from the get-go, Hackford brought in musical supervisor Curt Sobel, who was drawn to the scope and what he sees as the importance of the project. “I think Ray Charles was crucial to the history of 20th century culture,” says Sobel. “He was the first person to succeed in pooling together everything great about our country's music, the feeling of Gospel, the joy of Boogie-Woogie, the depth of Blues, and turning it into something very unique.”

Sobel was given full access to Ray Charles' vaults of recordings through the decades. But he also had the great luck to be able to work with Ray Charles himself in replicating his early recordings, collaborating with a group of New Orleans musicians who jumped with relish into pretending to be members of his original backing bands. Once these recordings were completed, Jamie Foxx then lip-synched his performances-replete with Ray's impassioned, swaying singing style-in order to capture him as a much younger man. Although the musically gifted Foxx was able to do, by all accounts, an uncanny re-creation of Charles' singing voice, Sobel says: “Ray Charles was just too great not to use him when we had the chance.”

For Sobel, working with Charles was a dream come true. “He was incredible to work with and it was extremely exciting for me,” says the music supervisor. “He was such a gentleman in the studio and it was very interesting to see how he worked with the musicians with such perfectionism. We came to him with certain songs that we wanted him to record and played them for him on a CD and he listened for a minute or so and then he would just go into the studio and start playing it on piano. He was a phenomenal musician and we were truly lucky to have his involvement.”

Sobel even shot video of Charles playing the piano so that Foxx could copy the movements of his hands. As shooting progressed, Sobel was overwhelmed by the work Foxx had done. “Sometimes you could swear you were looking at Ray Charles in the room,” he notes. “Jamie's also a terrific piano player and he was able to learn all these very difficult parts. It's hard for me to imagine that anybody else could have taken on this role so fully.”

To compose the score for the film, Hackford wanted someone with a deep passion and understanding for all forms of music, from the rush of a pop song to the emotions of string orchestrations. He chose multi-talented Scottish composer Craig Armstrong, who is known for his innovative, award-winning arrangements for the hit musical Moulin Rouge!, but equally for his work with such pop artists as Madonna, U2 and Massive Attack, as well as his own critically lauded classical compositions. “The film is driven by Ray's own music, but what we wanted the score to do is highlight more of Ray's inner world, to show how a man who went through a lot of suffering emotionally came out the other side,” explains Hackford. “Craig gave us a beautiful score that is inspired by Ray Charles but serves as a contrast to his timeless music.”

Ultimately, Hackford was gratified by watching so many different artists and craftsmen contribute to creating the story of Ray. “The one thing that really pleases me about the film is that in every element, from the music to the settings to the performances, it feels very immediate and exciting. I think what the actors and the crew have accomplished is something that's not at all about looking at the past, but about a man who started something revolutionary-something that is still inspiring artists who will make new breakthroughs tomorrow.”