Flashing back intermittently to dream-like scenes from his hardscrabble rural childhood, "Ray" chronicles Ray Charles' remarkable rise from sideman and Chitlin Circuit fixture to innovator, icon, and international superstar. Yet even as Charles ascends to the heights of the musical and cultural elite, he remains hobbled by heroin addiction and compulsive womanizing, a prisoner to his own insatiable needs. Through it all, Ray Charles possessed a rock-solid...

Each of the 140 tracks presented here has been digitally remastered from the best possible sound source to ensure state-of-the-art sonic quality. With certain rarities historical importance has taken priority; however, every effort has been made to restore acetates such as the private recordings from 1953 and "Fool, fool, fool."