DP
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Yes. But what was the point of writing about it? Ray picked a bad week to go.
For me, he forms a kind of bridge from Chuck Berry and Little Richard, to Ray Charles, to Miles Davis and John Coltrain that corresponds to first dances, to high school proms, to college, from about twelve to twenty ('55-63), from Maybellene to Kind of Blue, from rock to blues and soul, to jazz.
I never forgot the first time I heard them all, but especially Ray Charles. Transistor radios (remember when they came out?) were forbidden in my high school----a rule often ignored. One noon time in the lunch area, somebody cranked up his radio to play Ray Charles `One More Time' and got through about two minutes of it before the Boys VP thug broke through the crowd and hauld him off to detention---to boos and jeers of the gathering---a very amusing and similar sound to what was on the record at the famous break. I was immediately gripped by the sound and had to go find the record.
Looking at a google search on Ray Charles I see French, Spanish, German tributes. I am sure there are plenty of Japanese and Russian ones too. At the top it says 5,230,000 for Ray Charles.
Doing the same for the name, Ronald Reagan gets 2,020,000. I see no foreign language sites.
That kind of says it all. Better than 2:1, for Ray. So Roll over Beethoven, tell Tchaikovsky the news...
CG