Ray and Ray
It was the day of the Rays, yesterday. First up was "Ray" the film, in which Jamie Foxx plays Ray Charles, the R&B musician who died last year aged 73. Foxx will surely get a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his excellent performance, but the film spends far too much of its time dealing with the artist's repetitive drug excesses. Interestingly, the usually hyper-critical David Denby of The New Yorker called the movie a "vibrantly intelligent and tough-minded bio-pic." Here's his conclusion:
"An actor's most expressive tool is his eyes, but Foxx acts behind dark glasses or with his eyes shut, and he doesn't shrink from an element of the grotesque in Charles's stiff-gaited walk. Sometimes, when his Charles gets angry, people recoil for a second; they need a moment's reassurance that he's still human. There's something demonic about this guy, an insatiable energy that fuelled his personal life as well as such innovations as his insistence on driving soul and country sounds into the beats of R. & B. For many older people in the audience, the sound of Ray Charles's impassioned music is inseparable from memories of dating, dancing, lovemaking, and loss. 'Ray' has the bold good grace to honor the enraptured kids they once were and the sterner but still hungry grownups they have become."
David Denby in suspiciously sentimental mood, there, about a film that delivers a lot, but deserves to be criticized for not making up its mind about what it wants to say. No such criticism can be leveled at Ray Wylie Hubbard, however. Hubbard is of the elder statesman of Texan singer-songwriters. Over the course of four decades, he has perfected a brand of contemporary folk spiced with blues, rock and country. His songs are filled with, well, life:
The Last Younger SonMy last name is Younger; I am the last Younger son
The name I was given was Luke 15:21
Three days of thunder three days of rain
I come to be in this world with a number and a name.My last name is Younger; I am the last Younger son
I stand as a witness to the things I have done
I have caused sorrow yet I too have been pained
You cannot be in this world and not get stained.
As with Ray Charles Robinson, Ray Wylie Hubbard paid his dues to the wild life and the substances that fueled it, but he woke up one morning 15 years ago and took a hard look at what he wanted to do with the rest of his days. The years of rocking, rolling and raving were over and the newly clean and sober Hubbard set about cementing his position as the patriarch of the booming young Texas and Oklahoma music movement.
On the day of the Rays, a day when the sun shone, we rounded things off listening to Ray Wylie Hubbard "Live at Cibalo Creek Country Club". It's a hard-to-find recording, unlike "Growl".
