Even on the most prosaic of occasions, hearing a decent version of "Georgia On My Mind" can be an evocative experience. It's just one of those perfect songs, so perfect, in fact, that it really takes little more than the singing of its very first word – Georgia – to prompt shivers down the spine.
So when Willie Nelson steps up to the microphone and offers the magical first lyric at the funeral for Ray Charles – he of the definitive version of the Hoagy Carmichael classic – at the First AME Church in South Los Angeles on the morning of June 18, it's nothing short of transcendent. Two lines later, Nelson's voice cracks with lament over the loss of his longtime friend, and it's like the entire room of 1,500 invitees, hell, the entire neighborhood even, heaves in the wake.
