a song for you - Ray Charles
About Ray Charles
Ray Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004), known by his stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. Charles was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm & blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings for Atlantic Records. He also helped racially integrate country and pop music during the 1960s with his crossover success on ABC Records, most notably with his Modern Sounds albums.During his tenure with ABC, Charles became one of the first African-American musicians to receive and practice artistic control bestowed upon by a mainstream record company.In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Charles number ten on their list of "The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time",[6] and voted him number two on their November 2008 list of "The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time".
Charles was the son of Aretha Williams, a share cropper, and Bailey Robinson, a railroad repair man, mechanic and handyman. Williams was very religious and the family attended the New Shiloh Baptist Church. When Ray was an infant the family moved from his native Albany, Georgia to the poor black community of Jellyroll on the western side of Greenville, Florida.
In his early years, Charles showed a curiosity for mechanical things and he often watched the neighborhood men working on their cars and farm machinery. His musical curiosity was sparked at Mr. Wiley Pit's Red Wing Cafe when Pit played boogie woogie on an old upright piano. Pit would care for George, Ray's brother, so as to take the burden off Williams, but then George drowned in the Williams' wash tub when he was four years old.
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What's the song ?
"A Song for You" is a 1970 song written and originally performed by rock singer-songwriter Leon Russell. A slow, pained plea for forgiveness from an estranged lover, the tune is one of Russell's best-known songs.Donny Hathaway's 1971 recording is today considered one of his signature songs, even though the song was a cover and the single never made the Billboard charts.One of the few versions of the song that did make the charts was by Andy Williams, whose single peaked at #82 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971."A Song for You" is also the title of the third track of Gram Parsons' album, GP. This is not the same song written by Leon Russell.In 2009 Whitney Houston recorded a cover of the song for her sixth studio album I Look to You, it appears as track number six.