3. Ray Charles and David Ritz, Brother Ray: Ray Charles' Own Story (Cambridge, Mass.:Da Capo Press, 1978), 86.
4. Robert W. Stephens, "Soul: A Historical Reconstruction of Continuity and Change in Black Popular Music," The Black Perspective in Music 12, no. 1 (Spring 1984): 32.
5. Forever Ray, available at http://www.raycharles.com/the_man_biography.html.
6. Michael Lydon, Ray Charles (New York: Routledge, 2004), 419: "Arnold Shaw, in The Rockin' 50's says that 'I Got a Woman' is based on Jesus is All the World to Me. Because Renald Richard left Ray's band before the song was recorded, he was not at first properly credited: some record labels list [Ray Charles] alone as the songwriter. Richard, however, straightened that out with Atlantic, and he has for many years earned a substantial income from his royalties."
7. See Stephens, "Soul," 32. The standard biographical literature also repeats the same story:
In 1954 an historic recording session with Atlantic records fused gospel with rhythm-and-blues and established Charles' "sweet new style" in American music. One number recorded at that session was destined to become his first great success. Secularizing the gospel hymn "My Jesus Is All the World to Me," Charles employed the 8- and 16-measure forms of gospel music, in conjunction with the 12-measure form of standard blues. Charles contended that his invention of soul music resulted from the heightening of the intensity of the emotion expressed by jazz through the charging of feeling in the unbridled way of gospel.
"Ray Charles," Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed., vol. 3 (Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research, 1998), 469. Popular accounts offer the same story:
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: