"Ray McMillian loves playing the violin more than anything, and nothing will stop him from pursuing his dream of becoming a professional musician. Not his mother, who thinks he should get a real job, not the fact that he can't afford a high-caliber violin, not the racism inherent in the classical music world. And when he makes the startling discovery that his great-grandfather's fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, his star begins to rise....

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...

The dynamic film of the 1972 Los Angeles event attended by over 100,000 concertgoers and first billed as the 'black Woodstock, ' gets ya plenty. Its performances burn with vitality. Its forays into the neighborhood are a time capsule of pride and pain. And the Richard Pryor comedy riffs that provide the film's running commentary are a treasure all by themselves.

John Nickel, an African American blues musician managing a Memphis bar, hires a white brother and sister even though he knows they mean trouble, as he pines to be reunited with his son.