The North Florida boyhood home of the late Ray Charles honors its famous resident.
By LOUIS HAU
Published June 14, 2004
GREENVILLE - The late Ray Charles called many places home, but the tiny North Florida town of Greenville - or "Greensville," as he called it - was special. It was where his music began.
It was there he learned to play boogie-woogie piano at the Red Wing Cafe and sang spirituals at the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church.
"Man, I just liked Greensville," he recalled in his 1978 autobiography Brother Ray. "It was where I belonged."
On Sunday, the town where he grew up returned some love.
About 40 mostly local residents turned out at the Shiloh church for an informal memorial service for Charles, who died Thursday of liver disease at 73.
The red brick, white-steepled church sits in the shadow of a giant pecan tree on Ray Charles Avenue, just four doors from the dilapidated remains of Charles' boyhood home.
While Charles' music was steeped in the melodies and cadences of the church, his lyrics focused on decidedly worldly concerns like love, mostly of the carnal variety.
So Al Hall, the director of Tillman Funeral Home in nearby Monticello, perused the titles on his Ray Charles anthology CD for songs that would be suitable to be played in the church.
I Got A Woman? No.
Hallelujah, I Love Her So? No.
What'd I Say? Lord Jesus, no.
In the end, he settled on three tracks: Georgia On My Mind, I Can't Stop Loving You and America the Beautiful.
Teresa Duval, wife of Shiloh pastor J.B. Duval, played and sang four numbers at the piano during Sunday's tribute. She also steered clear of Charles' secular songs.
"I'd have turned the church out if I'd sung one of those blues," she said.
Originally, Hall had planned to place a memorial book at the church for Charles' admirers to sign and then play some of his recordings in a simple tribute.
But after Hall and his assistants set out flower arrangements in front of the church, a handful of local residents old enough to remember Charles felt compelled to approach the podium and address the assembly.
Outfitted in a royal blue dress and white Sunday hat, 73-year-old City Council member and former Mayor Elesta Pritchett recalled how the young "R.C." would come home during vacations from the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine, eager to tell his friends about everything he was doing at school and all the girlfriends he had.
Pritchett said Charles' strict but adoring mother Aretha, or "Miss 'Retha," would make a big fuss when he came home.
"Lord have mercy, he couldn't come home enough," she said.
Pritchett also recalled with regret her failed attempt in 1990 to get Charles to attend Greenville's annual "Country Christmas" festivities. Even with the promise of being honored with the key to the city, being named marshal of the parade, and having a street named in his honor, Charles never responded. Pritchett said she thinks the invitation never reached him.
"I thought he would live long enough to talk to him again," she said.
Joe Bea, an 86-year-old Shiloh deacon and retired farmer, marveled at how Charles could seemingly do anything a sighted boy could do, including shooting marbles, riding a bicycle backward and finding his friends' houses without help.
Then there was Charles' music.
"He always played the boogie," Bea said. "We loved it too . . . How can a blind fella play music? We couldn't play and we've got eyes."
- Louis Hau can be reached at 813 226-3404 or hau@sptimes.com
