Ray Charles: Love And Peace

IT'S RARE FOR any artist to re-emerge successfully from a long period of musical sterility. Harder still, somehow, for black musicians, whose problems – brought about by the inherent contradictions of the very mechanics of the business they're in – are compounded by the institutionalised racism that pressures them to opt for acceptance by making their music as "inoffensive" as possible. (Bobby Bland is still suffering; I await daily the news that Gladys Knight has turned her back on Las Vegas.)