“No no no, Marcus, your playing a B when you need to play an A… That’s more like it”. Throughout the beginning of my piano career I was always one of the worst people at the instrument. I couldn’t coordinate my fingers to play the right notes, and I couldn’t play much of any real songs. The idea of playing the piano just fascinated me though so I didn’t pay too much attention to how bad I was.
I was three the first time I saw a piano; the shine on the glossy black wood and the polished keys showed my reflection back at me. I was drawn to it, intrigued by it, and when my grandmother played it, I fell in love with it. Not so much her piano skills so much as the magnificence of sound of the chords and scales, basic yes, but just enough to catch my attention.
The first time I actually played the piano instead of just looking was when I was four. I banged on the keys wondered and questioned how to make the sounds beautiful like my grandmother made them sound. Years went by and my curiosity appealed to my parents and they signed me up for piano lessons at the age of 7. I tried and worked at it for about a year and decided that it just wasn’t in me to learn how to play it. I decided to just give up.
On the way home one day my parents and I were listening to the radio when the DJ stopped the music to announce the next song “The best of the oldies, here is Ray Charles….” “well, I got a woman. Way over town, that’s good to me. OH YEA, say I got a woman…”. I asked my mom about Ray and she told me that he was blind at the age of 7 by the disease Glaucoma and she told me that he still went on to be great. At the time I still pondered if I should stick with the piano or not. When we got home and I sat down to practice my mother looked me dead in the eyes and said “Marcus, this piano can be your future. It can make your dreams come true, Ray never gave up on his dreams and he was blind. I’m not going to make you stick with it but you need to think your decision about quitting over some more”.
That was it, I bought some of his albums and listened to all of his most famous songs, his voice rang in my head as I practiced and practiced and got better and better. “You will never be able to overwhelm an instrument. It can take you as far as you want to go only if you push it to your limits”. That was the quote I played by and it stuck with me for years. I realized his determination, many people told him that he was wasting his time because he was blind, he never gave up and didn’t let anyone turn him into a cripple he always tried his best.
As I listened to him play on his songs my love for the piano got stronger, my passion grew, and the music started to flow more clearly. Rough days would always come for me though, one day I got really frustrated and just locked myself in my room. I just needed something to take my mind away, I smacked the power button on my radio. The sound of one of Ray’s piano solos soured out of the radio and filled the room. Again his skills drew me back to the keys. He always changed it up, he mixed different styles of music to make something new, he would mix blues with jazz with gospel music and combine that with even a little bit of country which some of his music is undefinable and always catchy.
Ray wasn’t always the amazing piano player that he turned out to be. He started off just playing around with Mr. Wiley Pit at an old cafe down by where Ray lived, it wasn’t until he got into the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind that he started to actually practice and develop his skills. While learning the piano he was inspired by early blues artists like Charles Brown, and Nat King Cole. He never thought he would ever turn out to be a pianist though.
I grew older and my skills grew and I could play more advanced pieces. Things that most people would look at me with big eyes and watch my fingers fly up and down the board. My skills even at their peak weren’t good enough to play one of Ray’s songs, they were just too personal to him as if they were written so only his fingers could play them. I still tried to match him and in so doing I taught myself how to freestyle and how to solo. I wrote a few of them down and held on over the years and still pick them up from time to time to refine and make them better.
Ray’s special problem set him apart from all the rest of the players and even though it was a handicap it made him that much more determined and that much better, almost like it helped him because he couldn’t see failure, he couldn’t see wrong notes or off beats. His music projected into his eyes and soul and back onto the keys to make something all his own.
His dedication and talent is inspired many people other than me but alas all great things must come to an end and his end came June 10, 2004.
Ray is gone but his music still keeps going and his influences wont ever stop. I don’t hope to become as good as he was but his music and state of mind keeps me going every time I think about quitting. Whenever things just get too hard in my music world I lay on my bed and turn on his best works and let his soul set me right and take me away.
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