The Grammy Awards paid tribute to music legend Ray Charles. Also remembering Charles is one of his sidemen who is in our area this weekend.

Dave Statter's Report

Saxophonist David "Fathead" Newman found a big part of his own life up on the silver screen in the hit movie Ray.

Most people won't smile if you call them fathead. David Newman does. While he might prefer his given name, Newman has answered to "Fathead" since he was a teen. Two weeks shy of 72, it is now no longer just jazz fans who recognize the man and the music that go with that nickname.


Fathead is a character in the movie “Ray”, because for 12 years as Ray Charles made his name in American music, David Newman was beside him as sax player and friend.

Newman pays tribute to his pal in a new CD performing the songs he first played with Charles starting in 1954.

One thing Charles always stressed was to play whatever is in your heart and soul. Tears streamed down his cheeks when David Newman first saw the movie “Ray”. He once again heard his sax solos and Ray Charles' music. And he watched Jamie Foxx turn the clock back 50 years.

Just before he died Ray Charles told an interviewer one of his regrets was that he was sometimes too hard on the musicians who worked with him.


And as Fathead showed so well this weekend at Twins on 'U' St., he can play Ray Charles's music like it is his own, which of course it is.

And the one question he David “Fathead” Newman gets asked all the time? “Where did the name Fathead come from?” The answer to that question is a high school band director who thumped him on the head and yelled Fathead after seeing a piece of music upside down on his stand. But young David didn't need the music he had already memorized the Sousa march.

David "Fathead" Newman will give a free concert at the University of Maryland Monday night.