I’m so happy to report that I just got off the phone with the legendary Ray Sharpe! Ray’s fate and health status has been a mystery for several years. His brother passed away four years ago and nobody had seen or talked to Ray since then. Was he still alive? Various rumors persisted, but nobody knew where he was or how he was doing.
Last weekend when I was in Fort Worth, Jamey Brains contacted me and we had planned to try and track Ray down. The only problem is that nobody ever answered his last known phone number, and the voicemail was full. Jamey found an address, and before I left Fort Worth last week, I went and knocked on the door, but no one answered (and it looked like no one lived there). I wrote a long note explaining that myself and many others had been trying to find him and left it in the mailbox.
Happily, I was contacted by Ray’s friend and caregiver, Karen Stiles, who told me that Ray had been going through some rough health issues and suffered with some pretty serious glaucoma. She had known Ray for fifty-five years, and when her husband passed away last year, she went looking for Ray to see how he was doing. When she discovered him living alone and in bad health, she moved him out to East Texas so that she could care for him. I’m so happy that Ray is in a good place and being taken of by such a good human being. And thank you Karen for letting me speak to Ray on the phone today!
If you don’t know who Ray Sharpe is, your assignment today is to go to YouTube. Ray Sharpe had a big national hit in the late 1950s with “Linda Lu,” but then followed it up with a slew of great blues rockers: “Monkey’s Uncle” (covered by Ronnie Dawson), “Red Sails In The Sunset,” “Given Up” “My Baby’s Gone,” “Long Gone.” The dude had so many great records back in the day. For years, Ray ruled the Fort Worth blues scene, playing every club in town over the decades. I was lucky to work with Ray a dozen times at the Ponderosa Stomp festival in New Orleans, and playing with him was always a blast.
Ray seemed happy to hear that people had been trying to find him, and he also seemed up for doing an interview on Jamey’s radio show on KNON in Dallas. I’m just so happy to report that the great Ray Sharpe is still with us, and sounded great on the phone!
