At some point during high school, I picked up a couple friends for a big night out in downtown Columbus. We were having dinner and drinks (not sure how we pulled that part off) and then heading to a Ray Charles show at, I think, the Palace Theater.

I remember that dinner was good, although I can’t recall where we ate. I also remember that we were easily the youngest people in the Palace, at least among those who had a choice about attending. We had balcony seats, largely due to the fact that we were teenagers and had very little money. And I remember fidgeting, as Ray’s orchestra came on stage to warm us up with a few numbers before Ray started his part of the show.

After probably 30 minutes of some very sweet big band jazz, Ray came on and played for about an hour. He took time in between songs to talk with the audience a little bit, telling stories about particular tunes or other things that struck him at the moment.

And he played, as I recall, nearly everything I wanted to hear: Georgia, What’d I Say (with great back-and-forth between Ray and the Raylettes), I Got a Woman … I left thrilled, in part because my friends and I had pulled off a pretty cool night, but mostly, and probably secretly, because I got to see a genuine legend.

It’s a little difficult for me to place Brother Ray’s show with the rest of my musical experiences. I’m usually chasing the groove or the peak you feel when the band is stretching for something new. Ray’s show wasn’t that — it was well-orchestrated, choreographed, probably down to Ray’s stage banter. I’m certain he played the exact same set in each theater he visited that year.

But though you wouldn’t have seen it onstage during a Ray Charles show in the mid-1980s, Ray did a lot of the things that the jambands I get so worked up over now are doing. Phish, for example, has spent a ton of effort trying to ditch expectations, cross genres and bring new stuff to its audience’s ears.

Ray did that as well. Ray got notices while recording gospel records, but he got big when he recorded a country album, for crying out loud. My dad has Ray records recorded in a big band setting — similar to the Ray I saw — in a jazz trio, by himself, with a full orchestra. He seemed to be equally comfortable playing gospel, jazz, r&b, country … nearly anything. I’ve read several times that to Ray, it was just music.

For me, that’s enough, although much of the media coverage that’s about to begin will dwell on other things: Ray’s blindness, being black, emerging from poverty to make it in the music business. And those aspects of Ray’s story are worth covering, because they make his story all the more remarkable.

But when you put the CD on and turn the lights down, you’re not listening to a blind, black man … you’re not listening to someone who grew up poor … you’re not listening to someone who refused to play to segregated audiences in South Africa when it was still under the sway of Apartheid … You’re just listening to Ray. And by itself, that’s good enough to be one of the best ever.