Politics & Power Quote by Taylor Hackford

Hackford’s line is doing two jobs at once: it’s hype with a thesis tucked inside. As the director of Ray, he’s not simply praising his subject; he’s framing Ray Charles as an engine of American culture, the kind of artist who doesn’t just succeed within genres but rewires them.

“Not once but twice” is the key rhetorical move. It’s a neat escalation that pushes Charles beyond the standard biopic reverence into something closer to a historical force. The first “change” gestures toward the early synthesis: gospel’s fervor colliding with blues and jump rhythm to help form what we now file under soul and R&B. That move wasn’t merely musical; it was a cultural trespass. Charles took sacred sound, put it on the radio, and made mainstream America feel the electricity - and the discomfort - of Black church intensity in secular space.

The second “change” points to the country crossover that still reads like a dare. Modern listeners forget how hard those boundaries used to be, and how racialized they were. When Charles recorded country standards, he didn’t ask permission from genre gatekeepers; he treated the American songbook as a shared inheritance and, in doing so, forced the industry to admit the borders were artificial.

Hackford’s subtext is defensive, too: a preemptive argument for why this story deserves cinematic scale. He’s saying Charles isn’t just a virtuoso with a tragic arc. He’s a pivot point - twice over - in the ongoing fight over who gets to define “American” music.