Date: 2022-12-16
Time: 05:08:44 UTC
Title: Copacetic Music Hour Preview, 12/16/22: Richie Ray
Another week has passed, which means it's time for another episode of the
copacetic music hour! This week's featured artist is the Nuyorican pianist,
pioneer of boogaloo music, and born-again pastor Ricardo "Richie" Ray, El
Embajador del Piano. Ray was born Richard Maldonado Morales to Puerto Rican
parents in Brooklyn and gained his musical interest from his father, a noted
guitarist in Bayamon, Puerto Rico. Ray's musical career has spanned some six
decades, mainly as part of the salsa duo Richie Ray and Bobby Cruz with
lifelong friend Robert "Bobby" Cruz Feliciano. Ray and Cruz were part of the
mid-1960s boogaloo fad, recording hits like Aguzate and Lookie, Lookie. They
famously covered the Frank Sinatra hit My Way in 1970 as A Mi Manera, which
would be the most played Spanish language version of the hit.
While Ray and Cruz retired from music in 1987, they would reunite in 1991,
1999, 2000, and throughout the mid to late 2000s, being inducted into the
International Latin Music Hall of Fame in 2000 and winning the Latin Grammy
Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2006. Outside of music, Ray would radically
change his career in the mid-1970s, becoming a born-again evangelical Christian
and pastor. With Bobby Cruz, he would found over 70 churches in Puerto Rico and
the mainland United States.
Tomorrow night, as always, we will enjoy a sampling of Richie's hits alongside
a fireside IRC chat at tilde.chat channel tilderadio (#tilderadio). Join us!
