Roy Henry plays Ray Charles in a new musical at the Little Theatre in San Luis Obispo part of its Legends series.
When everyone else was celebrating the arrival of 2005, Mary Meserve was holed up in a hotel room across from Disneyland, anxious because she couldn’t seem to come up with a script for her Johnny Cash musical.
Depressed from her writer’s block, she started to watch the movie “Ray,” the biopic about Ray Charles, on television.
“I was so inspired—I was just blown away,” she said.
As Meserve watched Jamie Foxx’s spot-on portrayal of the legendary soul singer, the words suddenly came to her.
And then the words poured onto paper.
“I wrote the entire Johnny Cash show on New Year’s Eve while watching the movie ‘Ray,’ ” Meserve said.
Although the movie helped Meserve pen that installment of her popular Legends series for the San Luis Obispo Little Theatre, it didn’t seem likely she would ever tackle
a musical about Ray Charles. After all, Foxx had nailed the performance so well, his Academy Award was an afterthought before he was even nominated.
“I remember thinking, ‘It’s too bad I could never do a Ray show—because no one could ever top this movie,’ ” Meserve said.
Yet last week, a little more than two years later, Meserve was leading her cast through a rehearsal of “What’d I Say, A Musical Tribute to Ray Charles.”
A challenging production
The high standard set by the “Ray” movie represents just one of the challenges this show represented. Meserve also had to find black actors in a county where African Americans make up just 2 percent of the population. And she had to cast both stellar vocals and piano playing.
But perhaps most important, her last Legends show —about Elvis Presley—was the most popular to date. And she knew expectations would be high for the next one.
“The only person that came to mind that could measure up to that legendary status — that could be that good — was Ray Charles,” she said.
So she decided to pursue a Ray Charles play.
While the Little Theatre’s budget obviously pales compared to a Hollywood production (The Legends series is the theater’s biggest fundraiser), it does offer one advantage: live music. And for that, Meserve and crew have assembled a rollicking 12-piece band, complete with a four-man horn section and three singers portraying Charles’ backup singers, the Raelettes.
A familiar face
Leading the way as Charles is Roy Henry, who played Nat King Cole in a past Legends show.
Henry, who grew up watching Charles perform live in the Bay Area, has seen the movie and doesn’t expect to top Foxx’s Oscar-winning performance.
“I can’t compete with him,” Henry said. “They had a bigger budget than we have. Not to mention the fact that he’s something else on the piano. I don’t play a lick.”
Forget piano playing — just singing Ray Charles was tough enough.
“I thought it’d be a piece of cake,” Henry said. “I’d been listening to him most of my life. But to actually try to sing him? Oh, it’s not easy at all.”
Even though Henry’s a baritone and Charles was a natural second tenor, Henry can belt out the tunes. And all he needs is a pair of sunglasses and a bit of hair dye to capture the unmistakable Ray Charles look.
Tickling the ivories
Since Henry doesn’t play piano, Meserve turned to Mark Burnes, a longtime professional musician who once played bass with Dick Dale and the Del Tones.
The only problem was, Burnes had given up his 27-year musical career for real estate and seemed adamant about not returning to the stage.
“I was done, I was burnt out, I didn’t want to perform,” Burnes said. “Mary from time to time would ask, but I just wasn’t interested.”
Ray Charles forced him to reconsider.
“Ray Charles’ music is extremely sophisticated,” he said. “Playing this music is a real challenge, and it’s the kind of music that I really love playing.”
While Henry sits behind a 7-foot grand piano on stage, Burnes is playing a keyboard out of view, adding notes to Henry’s vocals.
“We’ve got him hidden behind the curtain, like the Wizard of Oz,” Meserve said.
With the aide of Burnes, musical director Alissa Aune and Craigs List, Meserve was able to put together the rest of the band.
“We needed pros to come in because we had very little rehearsal time,” she said.
If getting top-notch band members was tough, finding the actors was even more challenging.
In December, Meserve held an audition at a local church, where she found some cast members, including Raelette Zakiya Upshur. But the numbers were still small.
“Every time I put out a help call, nobody had time,” Henry said. “Or they lived in Santa Maria or Lompoc.”
Not having, say, a young black actor to play Charles as a child affected the script, which Meserve was constantly adjusting. Eventually, however, other actors arrived, usually from recommendations.
Aside from the live music, there’s another important distinction between the movie about Ray Charles and the local musical: In the Little Theatre production, Ray has no lines.
The storyteller
Most of the story is told through a journalist named Joanna, a white classical music enthusiast who is assigned to write about Charles.
“She’s pretty stuck on her properness,” said L.C. Smith, who plays Joanna. “I love Joanna, but she’s the kind of girl who can drive you crazy.”
Smith, a standout as Marion Keisker in the Elvis production last year, carries the plot, appearing in every scene.
“She’s a triple threat,” Meserve said. “She can sing, act and dance like crazy.”
While it’s unusual for a lead not to have a line, Charles’ movements and voice were so distinctive, Meserve said, the audience would expect a dead-on impression, like Foxx’s. So she decided to have Henry stick to the music, which was OK with him.
“I have a bad memory for lines,” he said.
During the play, Smith’s character interviews several people who knew Charles — including producer Quincy Jones, manager Joe Adams, Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun and Raelette Margie Hendricks.
Much of the sources for their stories come from the autobiography “Brother Ray, Ray Charles’ Own Story” —Meserve’s bible for this production.
Charles did live a dramatic —at times, heartbreaking — life. He witnessed his bother’s drowning at age 5, went blind at 7 and became addicted to heroin as an adult. There were also flings (he had 12 children by seven women), civil rights stands and, of course, the music, which earned him 12 Grammy Awards.
The birth of soul music
Proficient at piano and electric organ, Charles showed he could play several genres of music, including country, blues and jazz. But mostly, he’s known for pioneering soul. (His 1954 classic, “I Got a Woman,” is often credited for launching soul music.)
Meserve’s musical includes many of the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s best known songs, including “Georgia on My Mind,” “Hit the Road Jack,” “America the Beautiful” and “Shake Your Tailfeather.”
While Henry won’t have to worry about memorizing lines, he still has to remember lyrics from more than a dozen songs while trying to capture Charles’ unique mannerisms, which include swaying, stomping and self-hugging.
“All of that’s a part of who he was,” Henry said. “His other senses—his other movements— changed a lot when he became blind.”
Remembering to focus on those movements while simultaneously doing justice to Charles’ music is the last big challenge for “What’d I Say.” But the solution might be the simplest.
“I’ll probably put something inside the glasses to where I can’t see,” Henry said.
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Watch video of rehearsal