The story of American musical composition, this work delineates the heritage, actuality and potential of music. In 20 chapters, it shows the necessity of dealing with such unrelated artists as Milton Babbitt and Laurie Anderson, John Cage and Neil Young, Elliott Carter and David Byrne, and Philip Glass and Ornette Coleman.

Ray Charles (1930-2004) led one of the most extraordinary lives of any popular musician. In Brother Ray, he tells his story in an inimitable and unsparing voice, from the chronicle of his musical development to his heroin addiction to his tangled romantic life. Overcoming poverty, blindness, the loss of his parents, and the pervasive racism of the era, Ray Charles was acclaimed worldwide as a genius by the age of thirty-two. By combining the influences of gospel, jazz, blues, and country music, he invented, almost single-handedly, what became known as soul. And throughout a career spanning more than a half century, Ray Charles remained in complete control of his life and his music, allowing nobody to tell him what he could and couldn`t do.As the Chicago Sun-Times put it, Brother Ray is `candid, explicit, sometimes embarrassing, often hilarious, always warm, touching and deeply human-just like his music.`