Music vs. Monday: Charles and the Dictionary

For today's Music vs. Monday post, a memory and a namesake:

Ray Charles (When Country Western Met Rhythm-n-Blues) via Etsy seller SweatShopMade

I was four years old when my mother, squatting down on bent knees , looked me in the eyes and asked “Did you know you were named after your great grandfather “Charles”? I nodded, though I didn’t know where she was headed with this line of questioning. She licked an index finger and smoothed a dangling rogue hair that had escaped her earlier preening and fallen over my nose. "Granddaddy Wills was a very interesting man. He loved baseball, loved to hear it on the radio, and he loved words. He would sit me down each night on his lap, waaaaay before you were born, and he would read me excerpt s from the dictionary.” She laughed, “He was a very eccentric man.” And then almost to herself she whispered, “Charles Ellsworth Wills.”

Later she told me how my namesake would arrive at my grandmother’s house for a two week visit, carrying everything he owned. Charles Wills was no packrat; he was a scientist-librarian-collector and explorer. He would load up his washing machine in the back of his truck, put six or seven suitcases full of clothes and books, his typewriters, his journals, and then cover it all with an army tarp. He wanted to be prepared for anything, not like a boy scout who prepares for some camping misfortune but instead like a pioneer who is prepared to absorb the inevitable calamities of exploration and to document and preserve the discoveries that accompany such expeditions. And he loved music.

He had a collection of albums he would play until they became so scratched and worn that they were no longer listenable, and then they became heavy discs that would float from coffee table to floor; black plastic souvenirs of long watery-eyed nights spent fireside with whiskey and memory. I can picture him now in his spectacles, leafing through the dictionary and mumbling little anecdotes to himself, his hands with a slight syncopation jotting unusual phrases in his journals, shoulders wrapped in caramel colored cardigan, and the music or Ray Charles melting over the entire scene like butter on a handmade biscuit fresh from the oven. I’d like to imagine his favorite song was Let’s Go Get Stoned, but I feel like his sensibilities leaned more towards Georgia On My Mind. Whatever his musical preference, just knowing that he listened to Ray
Charles is enough for me.

BONUS: In honor of today’s post, I’m offering a free vintage vinyl two album Ray Charles set to the first person who makes a purchase of $75 or more in my Etsy shop. The ablum is called Ray Charles, A Man and His Soul.