The one I asked. Thanks for checking up.

Do I believe Frederick County has a charter? Yes, I do. What question do you really want to ask?

Just out of curiosity, do you believe that the particular charters of the town in question exist?

Oh no, I agree!

I agree and only a couple of people tried to point that out in the comments. In not point that out, he’s missed the entire reason why.

Agree 100%!!!

He was definitely a once in a lifetime musician for sure. I had forgotten about the country album. Thanks for the reminder! That’s a funny story.

Don’t forget Ray’s Country album. He grew up listening to country music in Florida, and when he did country, it got a lot of airplay on country stations, and, IIRC, it did well on the country charts.

Ray Charles story. He was playing at the Greek Theater in L.A., and it used to be that people would sneak up on the hillside behind the audience to hear the acts. Ray stopped a performance in the middle of a song because he thought the people in the trees were making noise and being disrespectful. It was some birds squabbling in the trees, even though it was at night.

Stevie Wonder and ray Charles are in classes of their own. Ray could be considered a jazz artist as much as he’d be considered a soul/r&b artist. I have an album he co-leads with famous jazz vibist Milt Jackson (of the Modern Jazz Quartet) where Ray plays alto saxophone! Of course, ,ost of the players in his bands have been jazz stars in their own right – David “Fathead” Newman, Hank Crawford, Marcus Belgrave, to name a few.

Yes, some are just born with that certain something. That’s part of the spectrum of intelligence we were speaking about the other day. Fwiw, Stan Getz is one of my favorite saxophonists. Coltrane once said that he wished he could play a ballad like Getz. He ended up being extremely troubled though. Drug addiction was one of his problems. Although there are different types of intelligence, I think one thing they all share is that genius really does border on insanity. Not many of these people are “normal” in the traditional sense. Their talent often brings them pain — a pain that is difficult to cope with without “help”. The best, as you point out, cross genres seamlessly. Keith Jarrett was a child prodigy, playing piano recitals from the time he was 7. He is considered a master in both classical and jazz. Many jazz musicians have leaned on the study of classical over the years. Miles Davis, for instance, was infatuated with Stockhausen.