For any musician, and certainly for Lionel Richie, who in January 1985 was one of the top pop stars in the world.
He knew the songs by heart and sang them as he ran up Tenth Street to get home in time for dinner. He knew every inch of the record cover: Ray’s name in the red banner above the photograph of him in the studio, suit jacket hanging from his shoulders, silver microphone hanging down, delivering Ray’s voice to the sound booth and then to the phonograph record and eventually to the console stereo in the living room of a house in North Wales, where a kid who would grow up to be an international pop superstar sometimes singing about love and sadness-this little kid would sit for hours, listening to Ray Charles.
It started with a bang of horns on the very first track, “Let the Good Times Roll.” The fifth song, “When Your Lover Has Gone,” was a beauty, all about love and sadness: “When you’re alone, who cares for starlit skies / When you’re alone, the magic moonlight dies.” By the time Ray got to “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Cryin’,” John was far, far away from this room, this little town. The record he listened to the most was The Genius of Ray Charles.
