BROTHER RAY Ray Charles' Own Story

If the renewed interest in Ray Charles’s life and music creates a new readership for this biography, the audio should have even greater appeal. Even through a ghostwriter, Charles speaks mostly in clichés, which sound even more dated today than they did in 1978, when the book was first published. Still, his words are brought to life by Andrew Barnes. He doesn’t imitate Charles’s distinctive voice but captures all of its passion and style. Even when Barnes occasionally stumbles over a sentence, the text is entertaining and far more compelling than it would have been in print. As a bonus, coauthor David Ritz includes a revealing postscript written shortly after Charles’s death last year. D.B. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/NOV 05]