Ray Charles Autograph The Holy Grail of Collecting Possible item for the Rock and Roll museum Start Price USD 650,000.00 Current Price USD 650,000.00 Time Left - Bid Count 0 Buy It Now Price USD 750,000.00 Reserve Price - Start Time Wednesday, July 02, 2008 End Time Saturday, July 12, 2008 Location Montgomery, AL See more about 'Ray Charles Autograph The Holy Grail of Collecting ' Description                                                            I am offering for sale my most prized material possession. A very rare autograph from the legendary Ray Charles. First you need to sit back, relax and get comfortable. This is going to take a minute or two to read. Questions that I have received about my item center around the other "Ray Charles autographs" that are found being auctioned on the web and from reputable firms. Let me repeat myself....these are not signed by Ray. They are signed by someone else that holds or held, at the time,  "Power of Attorney" They are legal signatures but NOT BY RAY HIMSELF. If you carefully read my story, you should then understand.Another example of what I mean...The difference between an autograph and a legal signature They both refer to the same thing; the manner in which you sign your name on a piece of paper. The difference is this. An autograph has a status, which a signature does not. Autographs are usually given by famous people to their adoring fans; people like movie stars, musicians, politicians, sports stars,  etc. are frequently asked for their autographs. A signature is something that someone will be asked to do when they sign their name on income tax returns, life insurance policies, checks, contracts etc., such as what is commonly found for sale by some dealers as authentic documents. Legal signatures can be made by someone other than the actual person and are done so all the time.Now, on with the story of how I obtained a REAL Ray Charles autograph.As it turns out, this was a true rare moment indeed. I liked photographing live concerts of rock bands when I was a teenager. My father, a retired Air Force Officer, took me to see Ray Charles perform his show at the officer’s club on Maxwell Air Force Base back in 73’ when I was 17. I had been a subscription holder and avid reader of Rolling Stone magazine and had read his interview a few months earlier. Not aware that he never signed autographs, I brought along my copy of the magazine in the hopes of obtaining it. I had it with me when we entered and sat down at our table. This is a very small venue. Perhaps having the capacity of only two hundred or so with a stage, club tables both on the main floor and on a raised “C” shaped section the surrounds the main floor. Here’s a link by a member of the Officer’s Wives Club to her photos from the club today. It has not changed in almost forty years.http://www.flickr.com/photos/ann-alto/2216233222/in/set-72157600236410412/My Dad and I both had our cameras with us and made some photos of the show. He and I both shot photos from our table and I got up and walked around the edges of the room and shot some more. I was really used to the “festival seating” common at rock concerts back then and felt the need to get a better vantage point. At one point while I was standing off to the side of the stage area a man approached me and asked me if I wanted to get closer and make some more photos. I of course said yes. He told me I could get right up next to his piano bench and shoot from there, The piano was towards the front edge of the raised stage (about three feet higher than the main floor) and this would give me a different kind of low angle view that I wasn’t getting from where I had been shooting. I moved there, for just a moment, pressed the button just once and moved back to where I was before. In that moment I made a truly wonderful image of Ray while he was singing and playing. It was a life changing moment in my photographic career.I’ve been a professional photographer for all of my adult life, shooting both news related events and governmental photos for elected officials. During my teen years I shot a lot of live concerts in the 70’s including Jethro Tull, Led Zepplin, Yes, The Allman Brothers, Grand Funk Railroad and Bruce Springsteen, to name a few,  and this is one of my all-time favorite images from that era. I will include 2 (two) signed, limited edition prints with the sale. These are archival quality digital high res scans of the original Tri-X negative. Anyway, back to the evening’s events. When I made my way back to my seat the gentleman ( he could have been Ray’s manager of many years Joe Adams I’m not sure or one of his tour managers) saw the Rolling Stone magazine on our table, came over and told me that Ray was very pleased with the interview and asked if I would like to have it autographed. I said “sure”. After the show the man escorted me back to the dressing room area and told Mr. Charles that I had made been photographing the show and had brought along a copy of the Rolling Stone issue with the interview and would he sign it for me. Ray said yes and with that, the man placed the issue on the table in front of him where upon Ray signed it “best wishes” in the upper corner, then with the assistance of the man as he turned the issue for him, he signed his name across the center of the page at an angle. I did not make a photo backstage of him signing it for a couple reasons. 1.  I was very nervous because I was not expecting it to happen like it did.2.  I didn’t know he was “known for not signing autographs” (after all, he was signing mine) so there was no reason to document the moment with a photograph Aof him doing so. Looking back, I guess it would have helped prove the fact that the event did indeed happen. But I didn’t. As the years passed, whenever I looked at the autograph It had always reminded me not of meeting Mr. Charles, but instead of that special evening I had spent with my Dad. It wasn’t until years later I found out that Mr. Charles was notorious for never signing autographs. When ever I looked online for examples of his signature I would never see one that looked like the one I had. When Ebay came along I would search and search but still nothing that looked like mine.Then on June 10, 2004 Mr. Charles passed away and later that same year (on Oct 29  2004) the movie “RAY” was released. After his passing, my thoughts were then that the autograph was even more rare than ever before. Months passed…and one night I was in a bookstore looking at magazines and saw a copy of “Autograph Collector” magazine. Didn’t realize there were magazines dedicated to that subject. I wrote down the web address and publisher/editor’s name, Steve Cyrkin, and once home, I looked him up online. I sent him an email describing the events of that fateful night years earlier and the autographed magazine I had. To my surprise a few minutes after hitting the send button, the phone rang and it was Steve. He asked if I was joking. I said no and we started talking about what I had. He asked if I could send him a few photographs of it. I did. After he viewed them, he called back and said he thought my story would make for a good article in his magazine. The Autograph Collector magazine’s article about the autograph ran for three consecutive issues along with an online vote from their website, www.autographcollector.com, from readers as to their thoughts on the authenticity. The poll was always running about 50/50. Some readers commented that they thought it was a fake. Others said that it could very well be real. Some sent in versions of Ray Charles autographs they had gotten in person over the years. None of which looked like mine. I’m not saying theirs aren’t real, they most likely are, but, they are different from mine. In a few was, the script is not the same as mine, the articles they had signed are pieces of paper (not an image of Ray) and mine says “best wishes”.The article is no longer running in the website’s search page. But, if you Google the phrase “ Ray Charles Autograph” you will find two links from the magazine that are still on the internet. The title is “Is it really Ray?When I first inquired to the magazine’s editor, I was originally asking the editor for help in proving that it was real and it’s possible worth on the open market. If , by chance, he had seen other examples that were close to mine or If he had connections and could contact any persons close to Ray Charles that could help verify the way the autograph’s letters were written. I never got any help with that.I want to state that the magazine never said one way or the other that they thought it was real. That was left up to their readers who could form their own opinion. All I can attest to is that “This one, indeed, is real and the facts that I have written about of that evening are true”So now comes the reason that I am offering this item for sale. My reasons are strictly personal. The price is in the mid-six figure range. My Dad has long passed away, I have many other memories of my time with him. It is now time to pass it along to someone else. And, with the economy in a state of flux, I need to make some financial moves for the future well-being of my family.Also, there’s another reason it’s price so high… It’s the holy grail of 20th century / popular culture autographs.You will never see anything like this for sale ever. There are companies that are selling legal documents with the name Ray Charles signed on them. These were not signed by Ray himself. They were signed by a proxy with legal authority to sign his name. These are not autographs. They are signatures on documents. Other’s offer “autographs” on lp’s or photos but, they also are signed by a proxy.Babe Ruth signed baseball will sell for thousands of dollars. He signed a lot of baseballs. Most ball players sign a lot of balls in their lifetime. It’s not unusual. Finding anything  besides a baseball signed by Babe Ruth or a legal document would be a real treasure.  When items by or even Albert Einstein are offered for sale they are usually letters or other documents bearing their signature. These are not true autographs. Real autographs are signatures signed specifically as one’s signature on paper, in books, on baseballs or on other items for collection purposes only.  Nothing more. The signatures found on legal document, ie: contracts, checks, or signed letters are simply a person’s signature on a said item but, as in the case of Mr. Charles and many other persons, a proxy with power of attorney would sign these items for them. In the distant past before email etc., people often wrote letters to each other and these are the most common items found for sale from that period.  However, I have found through searching the web, that in the mid 1800’s, books were beginning to be first produced to capture and collect autographs from famous and everyday people. This practice has continued through today with the use of autograph books. Many of the Beatle autographs you find for sale are in fact pages from this type of book. Beatle autographs sell for many thousands of dollars, but remember also that, they had proxies who signed a lot of their items for fan club members. Sure, there are many authentic Beatles autographs out there  But remember, you never see a photograph taken by the person getting the autograph of the Fab Four when signing them and they are still offered by experts as authentic because there are so many out there to compare them to. That’s because The Beatles actually signed a lot of autographs when asked by their fans. Even to this day Paul and Ringo will sign for fans when asked. Politicians often used an “autopen” machine to sign for them because of the many requests for their signature on letters and documents such as graduation diplomas or certificates of any kind. Thomas Jefferson was one of the first people to ever use an “autopen” devise.  JFK used one all the time. In fact, every President since Truman has used the “autopen”.  I know, from personal experience from working on a governor’s personal staff that legal documents such as legislative bills and diplomas by the hundreds for state universities were signed by a staffer in the legal department that held “power of attorney” to sign their name on legal binding papers. They, like most elected officials, only sign legislation in person at press conferences and other “staged” events when it served their purposes for media coverage.This, however, is not the case with Ray Charles. The statement he was most often quoted  with, when asked not signing autographs for people when confronted in person.  ‘I don’t sign anything I can’t see.’” Is the quote most attributed to him when it came to autographs.  I did not ask Mr. Charles for his autograph. Sure, I carried the magazine hoping to get him to sign it but before I could ask, the offer was made to me instead. This, I believe is the reason he signed it. Because his trusted assistant asked him to do it for a teenager that was shooting photos of the show. And, it was on a copy of that issue of the Rolling Stone. The first true account of his life and career as told to writer Ben Fong-Torres. In it, Charles talked candidly about his life and years of drug use. The cat was out of the bag and he was very happy to have finally given his own accounting of it in a public forum.If you have any questions of me concerning the autograph I will be happy to reply either via this site or by personal email.This is not a ball-point ink pen. The signature is signed using a black "Flair" felt-tip pen. The Flair pen was introduced into use in 1966.  This was before "Sharpie" markers.I realize that provenance concerning items like this are usually always needed to assure authenticity. The only provenance I have to offer are the photographs made that evening of his performance and my word. You be the judge. This is not a fake or a gimmick for publicity or anything other than what it is. The offer of a lifetime. To own a one-of-a-kind original autograph.The questions I have received have mostly centered on the price I have set. It's set high because this a one of a kind piece of music history. This autograph covers a wide range for collectors. It's museum quality. It should be in a collection that allows for the viewing of the general public. My listing it on EBAY has given me the chance to have the public view it and that's really been great. Prior to this listing, only friends could have the chance to view this item in-person. You will never see another one like this...ever.Thanks for all the questions and comments that many of you have sent. I have received hundreds of comments and questions because of the listing.Keep em' coming. Peace and Love, kevin  Place a Bid!