Ray Charles: He’s a Genius at Doing What’s Natural : Pop music: ‘Anything you see me do on stage is the way I am off,’ says the plain-talking singer, who plays Costa Mesa tonight.

A conversation with Ray Charles, even a phone conversation, is much like one of his performances: full of dynamic swings, foot-stomping conviction and polite interludes. “I’m very natural, man,” he said this week from his recording studio in Los Angeles. “Anything you see me do on stage is the way I am off. I don’t put on airs, I don’t make believe, I don’t see any reason to pretend. My mom used to preach ‘be yourself,’ and there’s something to be said for that. It’s like that old line: ‘What you see is what you get.’ ”

What you get is a man who’s modest about his achievements, determined in his love of music and outspoken about what music should be. Ask what he thinks of rap and hip-hop and he answers politely--at first.

“You have to remember I’m a musician,” said the singer-keyboardist who back in the ‘50s did as much as anyone to pry open the body of American pop and inject it with soul. “So rap doesn’t do anything for me; I can’t learn anything from it. Rap is like reciting poetry--I could do that when I was 7. All you have to do is match (the words) with the rhythm. That’s nothing. That’s . . .”

And the depth of his feeling shows with an expletive, for which he apologizes immediately.

But ask if there isn’t some hip-hop rhythm and style on his last record for Warner Bros., “My World,” and off he goes again.

“I don’t know what you mean by hip-hop. How would I know what I’m listening to is hip-hop if I don’t even know what hip-hop is? In the ‘70s, they used to ask me what disco was and I’d say it’s basically a drummer playing quarter notes. For a musician, that’s nothing new, that’s not saying anything. We’re always keeping time, always playing rhythm. Now country or hillbilly or jazz, they have a distinct sound. But hip-hop, I don’t know what you mean. It’s just words, man.”

Which might be just the sort of response you would expect from a performer who has spent so much of his career tearing down the barriers between various styles, and fusing them back together in his own image. Categories meant nothing as Charles started out in the ‘50s turning gospel tunes into R&B; hits (“Talkin’ About You” springs from “Talkin’ About Jesus”), melding jazz and pop (his 1957 album “The Great Ray Charles”) and then, in the ‘60s, giving country-Western a soulful touch with his chart-topping single “I Can’t Stop Loving You.”

A champion of musical integration, Charles also has taken his music to audiences and venues formerly closed to pop musicians.

As his audience grew, “the Genius” progressed from roadhouses and jazz joints to concert halls. That sort of groundbreaking continues tonight when he will appear at the Orange County Performing Arts Center--not as a guest as he did a while back with the Pacific Symphony, but with his own orchestra and backup singers, the Raelettes.

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This will be only the second time in the center’s nearly eight-year history that it has given its stage over to a bona fide pop performer of the post-World War II generation (the first having been Art Garfunkel, whose shows are decidedly more reserved than Brother Ray’s).

Charles said he has no hard feelings that it has taken certain Orange County arts mavens so long to acknowledge his work as sufficiently legit for their hall. For one thing, he noted, he has been playing similar venues everywhere else in the world for years.

But beyond that, “you can’t really get far into the politics of this kind of stuff,” he said. “I know times change, just like the services in church have changed over the years, and people change. There was a time where they wouldn’t think of having a jazz thing (in a hall like OCPAC) or when classical musicians thought it beneath them to play with a jazz artist. It’s a stupid, idiotic thing, but I’ve seen it.

“What I’ve found over the years is that you try to please the public, not the institutions. If you play good music, they’ll come, they’ll spend $30 or $40 and stand in the rain to see you. That’s where my love is, that’s where my heart goes, strictly to the public. When you have people who’ve stood by you for 50 years as I have, that’s the only way you can feel.”

Charles is also outspoken over the changes he has seen in the music business during those 50 years. “Back when I started, you had music people running the record business, people who could tap their feet and snap their fingers in time. Today it’s all attorneys and lawyers. These guys can’t even keep time to a march.

“Back in the days I started with Atlantic (Records), they said, ‘You play the music, we’ll pay the bills.’ Now you have a bunch of people who come in and tell the artist what to sing and how to sing it. They want the artist to sound like the guy who had the last hit record. Everybody ends up copying everybody else. It’s a shame that the young artist can’t be himself.”

Which brings him full circle: Being himself is what Ray Charles is all about.

“I’ve been fortunate that I was able to be with record companies that did not stifle me, did not curtail what I wanted to do. I love all types of music, love the blues, the church music, country music. I do what I feel is right for myself.

“I’m not a specialist. If you have a jazz concert, I can fit in; if it’s country, I can fit in. I can sing blues, jazz, a love song. I’m a utility player: I can play first, second or third base. I can catch and even pitch if you need me to.”

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For the last several years, he has been pitching for Pepsi, in a series of commercial spots that have placed the phrases “Uh-huh” and “You’ve got the right one, baby” into the national lexicon. Though his reputation is secure with adults who were there when he was cranking out hit after hit, does he ever worry that a younger generation will remember him only as a soda pop spokesman?

“I don’t have any hang-ups about that,” he replied. “I just want people to remember me. How they remember me, I don’t give a good damn about that; as long as I left a mark, that’s good enough for me.”

At 63, he said he isn’t even considering retirement. “What would I retire to? You either retire to something or retire to nothing. Retiring to nothing is a waste. This is all that I do, sing and play music, and I’ll be doing it until the good Lord says, ‘You’ve been a good horse, now its time to put you out to pasture.’ That’s when I’ll retire.”

* Ray Charles, the Ray Charles Orchestra, the Raelettes and Ernestine Anderson sing tonight at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. 8 p.m. $26-$44. (714) 740-2000.