When you play music with someone who has a heart rather than playing with someone who is just doing it for money or is cynical it makes all the difference.
Ray would be in trouble, he would get drunk, he would try and kill J.R on three different occasions, he would make mistakes with financial affairs, and have various human problems, but he didn't have any mean bones in his body! That was a little bit of what the show was about.
Ideas came with explosive immediacy, like an instant birth. Human thought is like a monstrous pendulum; it keeps swinging from one extreme to the other.