This young, blind, black, gravelly-voiced singer brought together the most engaging aspects of black music into one form and began the process of synthesis that led to soul and, ultimately, funk a decade later. He would turn around gospel standards like "My Jesus Is All the World to Me," recreating it as "I Got a Woman[.]"
Ricky Vincent, Funk: The Music, The People, and the Rhythm of the One (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1996), 121. See also Joel Hirschhorn, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Songwriting (New York: Alpha Books, 2004), 108: "I Got a Woman was Ray's rewrite of 'My Jesus Is All the World to Me.' "
Charles himself was more equivocal about the origins of the song:
So I was lucky. Lucky to have my own band at this point in my career. Lucky to be able to construct my musical building to my exact specifications. And lucky in another way: While I was stomping around New Orleans, I had met a trumpeter named Renolds [sic] Richard who by thus time was in my band. One day he brought me some words to a song. I dressed them up a little and put them to music. The tune was called "I Got a Woman," and it was another of those spirituals which I refashioned in my own way. I Got a Woman was my first real smash, much bigger than [">[Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand[.]" This spiritual-and-blues combination of mine was starting to hit.
Charles and Ritz, Brother Ray, 150.
8. See Lydon, Ray Charles, 419.
9. James Boyle, Shamans, Software, and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996).
10. James Henke, Holly George-Warren, Anthony Decurtis, and Jim
Miller, The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll:
The Definitive History of the Most Important Artists and Their
Music (New York: Random House, 1992), 130.
11. Great American Country, "Ray Charles Biography," available at http://www.gactv.com/gac/ar_artists_a- z/article/0,,GAC_26071_4888297,00.html.
12. "His 1955 smash 'I've Got a Woman,' for example, was adapted from a gospel number he'd liked called 'I've Got a Savior.' " Chip Deffaa, Blue Rhythms: Six Lives in Rhythm and Blues (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 161.