Jeff Usher didn’t want to be known as “that blind guy who covers Ray Charles” when he began his career.
But now he’s all for it. “One of my friends persuaded me to do the show and initially I said no,” Jeff says, “because I compose my own music, some of which I’ll be doing at the Ray Charles show.”
Jeff reflects on his earliest memories of hearing Ray's music. “[‘Hit The Road Jack’ is] a pretty important tune to me because it was one of the first Ray Charles songs I ever heard, along with ‘Unchain My Heart’.”
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Jeff has balanced performing, teaching and studying his PhD in music composition over the past few years; a project that has a lot of meaning for him. “There’s been a lot of ink wasted on the lifestyles of jazz musicians, but there’s been comparatively very little about how jazz compositions are written.
“There are bits here and there but nothing that’s been properly organised, so I wanted to do something to rectify that; at least from the point of view of what I compose.”
Jeff has multiple albums to his name, one released in 2015 titled ‘Bird Wings’ contains seven songs from these compositions. “I wrote a piece that is a dedication to my high school music teacher, which tells the story of how she stopped me from quitting music at the age of 13. It’s called ‘Kathleen’s Theme’.
“I did some of the music first and then I thought I needed more. I wasn’t going to just play it, I needed to sing it. I woke up at half-past-five one morning in July 2015 and just started writing. It took me a lot longer to figure out the music for it, seven or eight months.”
Earlier in his career, along with Larrie Cook, Jeff made the Guinness Book of Records for Longest Blues Song in the '70s, clocking in at 24 hours and 26 minutes. “We did it May 24th and 25th 1977 at the Trans-Continental Hotel in Brisbane. I had very sore hands for about a week afterwards but Larrie was in a worse condition.
"He was playing guitar and had bleeding fingers, so he had to keep switching to saxophone. And just for good measure, he had a nice coat over the back of his chair and someone pinched it!” Jeff laughs.
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Earlier this year, Jeff re-released his 2005 album ‘Blues City’, the title track of which he’ll be performing at the upcoming Ray Charles tribute. Jeff discusses some of his favourite tracks to play. “Ray Charles didn’t write ‘Georgia On My Mind’, but he sure as hell took it and made it his own. If you ask anyone to name a Ray Charles tune, oftentimes that will be one of the first they name.”
Further favourites include ‘Unchain My Heart’ and ‘Take These Chains’; Jeff jokingly adds that “Ray Charles seems to have a thing about getting chained up. But certainly, all of the classic Ray Charles I love playing.”
