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Ray Charles and his orchestra opinions

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on August 27, 2015 at 10:43pm

Markus is top-notch. He's one of my favorite dealers. He would never offer anything he did not feel was geniune. Note that Markus immediately stopped offering the one you posted once he found out its authenticity was questioned. He won't offer it again unless he's still comfortable with its authenticity.

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Permalink Reply by Paul on August 27, 2015 at 10:52pm

We need more blokes like him. Everyone says the same thing. But we're having a yarn about Ray Charles and that's fine.

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Permalink Reply by MG on August 27, 2015 at 11:30pm

Thank you for posting these 1961 early examples, Steve, they are interesting and I enjoy this discussion. In fact, there are strong consistencies between these two specimens and the one that Paul posted from Markus. We have to remember that there was almost a complete decade (1961 / 1969) between the signings of these autographs by Ray Charles, so I consider the one by Markus as a nice example of a later autograph of Ray.

The additional band members provide further evidence...in fact, the one of Steve also has band members' autographs on the back. We should be happy as a hobby community to have discovered this new latter life specimen of Ray Charles autograph from 1969.

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Permalink Reply by Phil Spilsbury on May 31, 2017 at 9:22am

These are mine and were both taken face-to-face with Ray Charles and were signed by him. They were taken in May 1963 in Birmingham UK where Ray Charles was doing a show. I've got one on the back of a promo card and the other is in a end-of-year edition (1962) of New Musical Express and it contains another 70 autographs (taken through 1963) of other stars of the day. My friend Paul got his autograph direct from Ray who signed it for him. Paul was 14 at the time and I only guess because they were kids he agreed to sign. Paul recalls his manager/assistant guided his hands to the item and then Ray signed.