"Music to me is just like breathing. I have to have it. It's part of me."

Ray Charles died a week ago today. He was 73.

With everything else going on last week, we didn't do justice to the man. A lot of recording artists are said to "transcend musical boundaries." Ray Charles defined the term. He not only recorded music for soul, jazz, blues, rythym and blues, country and western, and gospel audiences, but he excelled at all of them, as if each was his primary genre. He gave early rock and roll its "tent revival" underpinnings, and lent passion to the vignettes of Saturday night, as well as Sunday morning.

One of my favorite moments in television was on NBC's The Cosby Show, when the Huxtable family mimed his tune "You Know The Night Time (Is The Right Time)" for the grandparents. And, who could forget his cameo appearance in the movie "The Blues Brothers" with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.

In an era when "stars" are created by New York producers, more for their looks than for their talent, we have lost another one who kept it real, and "in love with the street." When an artist is content with his own company and his own art, and stays true to himself regardless of what Hollywood or Madison Avenue tells him, history will remember him long after he is gone. The "Milli Vanilli's" of the world will come and go. But Ray Charles could "see" where he was going, because he knew that from which he came.

May he sing the Master's praises, in the holy city of Jerusalem.