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This chapter is the story of that song. "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People" is the end (for the moment) of a line of musical borrowing. That borrowing extends far beyond Kanye West's song "Gold Digger." "Gold Digger" is memorable largely because it in turn borrows from an even older song, a very famous one written half a century before and hailed by many as the birth of soul music. It is in the origins of that song that we will start the trail. 19
I GOT A WOMAN 20
In 1955, Ray Charles Robinson, better known as Ray Charles, released a song called "I Got a Woman." It was a defining moment in Charles's musical development. Early in his career he had unashamedly modeled himself on Nat King Cole. 21
I knew back then that Nat Cole was bigger than ever. Whites could relate to him because he dealt with material they understood, and he did so with great feeling. Funny thing, but during all these years I was imitating Nat Cole, I never thought twice about it, never felt bad about copying the cat's licks. To me it was practically a science. I worked at it, I enjoyed it, I was proud of it, and I loved doing it. He was a guy everyone admired, and it just made sense to me, musical and commercial sense, to study his technique. It was something like when a young lawyer—just out of school—respects an older lawyer. He tries to get inside his mind, he studies to see how he writes up all his cases, and he's going to sound a whole lot like the older man—at least till he figures out how to get his own shit together. Today I hear some singers who I think sound like me. Joe Cocker, for instance. Man, I know that cat must sleep with my records. But I don't mind. I'm flattered; I understand. After all, I did the same thing.3 22
In the early 50s Charles decided that he needed to move away from Cole's style and find his own sound, "sink, swim or die." But as with any musician, "his own sound" was the product of a number of musical traditions—blues and gospel particularly. It is out of those traditions that "I Got a Woman" emerged; indeed it is that combination that causes it to be identified as one of the birthplaces of soul music. 23
According to the overwhelming majority of sources, "I Got a Woman" stems from a fairly overt piece of musical borrowing—Charles reworded the hymn "Jesus Is All the World to Me"—sometimes referred to as "My Jesus Is All the World to Me." 24
Musically, soul denotes styles performed by and for black audiences according to past musical practices reinterpreted and redefined. During its development, three performers played significant roles in shaping its sound, messages, and performance practice: Ray Charles, James Brown, and Aretha Franklin. If one can pinpoint a moment when gospel and blues began to merge into a secular version of gospel song, it was in 1954 when Ray Charles recorded "My Jesus Is All the World to Me," changing its text to "I Got A Woman."4 25
That story is repeated in the biography on Charles's Web site. "Charles reworded the gospel tune 'Jesus Is All the World to Me' adding deep church inflections to the secular rhythms of the nightclubs, and the world was never the same."5 Michael Lydon, Charles's most impressive biographer, simply reports that "Jesus Is All the World to Me" is described as the song's origin in another published source,6 and this origin is cited repeatedly elsewhere in books, newspaper articles, and online,7 though the most detailed accounts also mention Renald Richard, Charles's trumpeter, who is credited with co-writing the song.8 26
To secular ears, "Jesus Is All the World to Me" is a plodding piece of music with a mechanical, up-and-down melodic structure. It conjures up a bored (and white) church audience, trudging through the verses, a semitone flat, while thinking about Sunday lunch rather than salvation. It is about as far removed as one could be from the syncopated beat and amorous subject matter of "I Got a Woman." The hymn was the product of Will Lamartine Thompson—a severe-looking fellow with a faint resemblance to an elderly Doc Holliday—who died in 1909 and is buried in the same place he was born, East Liverpool, Ohio. But the words have an earnestness to them that gives life to the otherwise uninspired verse. 27