Ray Charles: Love And Peace
Penny Valentine, Melody Maker, 28 October 1978
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.)
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