I recorded the movie “Ray” from HBO when it was a free weekend and have been watching it. Talk about a rags-to-riches story. His mother was a sharecropper, but a strong person who taught him to be independent, despite his blindness. His musical talent was astonishing. There are so many of his songs that I grew up listening to — Georgia on My Mind, I’ve Got a Woman, What’d I Say, I Can’t Stop Loving You and so many more. They can bring you to tears and make you want to never stop dancing. He certainly had the magic touch and brought joy to so many people worldwide. Like so many great artists, his personal life was less than perfect. But the magnitude of his talent was sheer perfection. Let’s learn more about Ray Charles.
According to Wikipedia, Ray Charles Robinson Sr. (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004) was an American singer, songwriter, pianist and composer. Among friends and fellow musicians, he preferred being called "Brother Ray." He was often referred to as "The Genius." He was blinded during childhood, possibly due to glaucoma.
Charles pioneered the soul music genre during the 1950s by combining blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and gospel styles into the music he recorded for Atlantic. He contributed to the integration of country music, rhythm and blues and pop music during the 1960s with his crossover success on ABC Records, notably with his two “Modern Sounds” albums. While he was with ABC, he became one of the first black musicians to be granted artistic control by a mainstream record company.
Charles's 1960 hit "Georgia On My Mind" was the first of his three career No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. His 1962 album “Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music” became his first album to top the Billboard 200. He had multiple singles reach the Top 40 on various Billboard charts: 44 on the US R&B singles chart, 11 on the Hot 100 singles chart and two on the Hot Country singles charts.
Charles cited Nat King Cole as a primary influence, but his music was also influenced by Louis Jordan and Charles Brown. He had a lifelong friendship and occasional partnership with Quincy Jones. Frank Sinatra called Ray Charles "the only true genius in show business," although Charles downplayed this notion. Billy Joel said, "This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley."
For his musical contributions, Charles received the Kennedy Center Honors, the National Medal of Arts and the Polar Music Prize. He was one of the inaugural inductees at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. He has won 18 Grammy Awards — five posthumously, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987, and 10 of his recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Rolling Stone ranked Charles No. 10 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and No. 2 on their list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. In 2022, he will be inducted into the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame.
Early life and education
Ray Charles Robinson was born on September 23, 1930 in Albany, Georgia. He was the son of Bailey Robinson, a laborer, and Aretha or Reatha Robinson — nee Williams — a laundress, of Greenville, Florida.
During Aretha's childhood, her mother died, and her father — a man Bailey worked with — could not keep her. The Robinson family — Bailey, his wife Mary Jane and his mother — informally adopted her, and Aretha took the surname Robinson. A few years later 15-year-old Aretha became pregnant by Bailey. During the ensuing scandal, she left Greenville late in the summer of 1930 to be with family in Albany, Georgia. After the birth of Ray Charles, she and her baby returned to Greenville.
Aretha and Bailey's wife — who had lost a son — then shared in Charles's upbringing. His father abandoned the family, left Greenville and married another woman elsewhere. By his first birthday Charles had a brother, George. In later years, no one could remember who George's father was.
Charles was deeply devoted to his mother and later recalled — despite her poor health and adversity — her perseverance, self-sufficiency and pride were guiding lights in his life.
In his early years, Charles showed an interest in mechanical objects and would often watch his neighbors working on their cars and farm machinery. His musical curiosity was sparked at Wylie Pitman's Red Wing Café — at the age of three — when Pitman played boogie woogie on an old upright piano; Pitman subsequently taught Charles how to play the piano. Charles and his mother were always welcome at the Red Wing Cafe and even lived there when they were in financial distress. Pitman would also care for Ray's younger brother George, to take some of the burden off their mother. George accidentally drowned in his mother's laundry tub when he was four years old.
Charles started to lose his sight at the age of four or five and was blind by the age of seven, likely as a result of glaucoma. Destitute, uneducated and mourning the loss of her younger son, Aretha Robinson used her connections in the local community to find a school that would accept a blind African-American pupil. Despite his initial protest, Charles attended school at the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine from 1937 to 1945.
Charles further developed his musical talent at school and was taught to play the classical piano music of J.S. Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. His teacher, Mrs. Lawrence, taught him how to use braille music, a difficult process that requires learning the left hand movements by reading braille with the right hand and learning the right hand movements by reading braille with the left hand, then combining the two parts.
Ray Charles's mother died in the spring of 1945, when he was 14. Her death came as a shock to him; he later said the deaths of his brother and mother were "the two great tragedies" of his life. Charles decided not to return to school after the funeral.
1945-1952: Florida, Los Angeles and Seattle
After leaving school, Charles moved to Jacksonville to live with Charles Wayne Powell, who had been friends with his late mother. He played the piano for bands at the Ritz Theatre in LaVilla for over a year, earning $4 a night — $39 in 2020 dollars. He joined Local 632 of the musicians' union, in the hope that it would help him get work and was able to use the union hall's piano, since he did not have one at home. That is where he learned piano licks from copying the other players. He started to build a reputation as a talented musician in Jacksonville, but the jobs did not come fast enough for him to construct a strong identity, so at age 16, he moved to Orlando, where he lived in borderline poverty and went without food for days. It was difficult for musicians to find work, since World War II had ended and there were no "G.I. Joes" left to entertain. Charles eventually started to write arrangements for a pop music band, and in the summer of 1947 he unsuccessfully auditioned to play piano for Lucky Millinder and his sixteen-piece band.
In 1947, Charles moved to Tampa, where he had two jobs, one as a pianist for Charles Brantley's Honey Dippers.
In his early career, he modeled himself on Nat King Cole. His first four recordings —"Wondering and Wondering," "Walking and Talking," "Why Did You Go?" and "I Found My Baby There" — were allegedly made in Tampa, although some discographies claim he recorded them in Miami in 1951 or Los Angeles in 1952.
Charles had always played piano for other people, but he was keen to have his own band. He decided to leave Florida for a large city, and — considering Chicago and New York City too big — followed his friend Gossie McKee to Seattle, Washington, in March 1948, knowing that the biggest radio hits came from northern cities. Here he met and befriended — under the tutelage of Robert Blackwell — a 15-year-old Quincy Jones.
With Charles on piano, McKee on guitar and Milton Garrett on bass, the McSon trio — named for McKee and Robinson — started playing the one-to-five A.M. shift at the Rocking Chair. Publicity photos of the trio are some of the earliest known photographs of Charles. In April 1949, he and his band recorded "Confession Blues," which became his first national hit, soaring to the second spot on the Billboard R&B chart. While still working at the Rocking Chair, he also arranged songs for other artists, including Cole Porter's "Ghost of a Chance" and Dizzy Gillespie's "Emanon." After the success of his first two singles, Charles moved to Los Angeles in 1950 and spent the next few years touring with the blues musician Lowell Fulson as his musical director.
In 1950, his performance in a Miami hotel impressed Henry Stone, who went on to record a Ray Charles Rockin' record — which never became particularly popular. During his stay in Miami, Charles was required to stay in the segregated but thriving black community of Overtown. Stone later helped Jerry Wexler find Charles in St. Petersburg.
After signing with Swing Time Records, he recorded two more R&B hits under the name Ray Charles: "Baby, Let Me Hold Your Hand" in 1951, which reached No. 5, and "Kissa Me Baby" in 1952, which reached No. 8. Swing Time folded the following year, and Ahmet Ertegun signed him to Atlantic.
In addition to being a musician, Charles was also a record producer, producing Guitar Slim's No. 1 hit, "The Things That I Used to Do."
1959-1971: Crossover success
Charles reached the pinnacle of his success at Atlantic with the release of "What'd I Say," which combined gospel, jazz, blues and Latin music. Charles said he wrote it spontaneously while he was performing in clubs with his band. Despite some radio stations banning the song because of its sexually suggestive lyrics, the song became his first Top 10 pop record.
Later in 1959, he released his first country song (a cover of Hank Snow's "I'm Movin' On") and recorded three more albums for the label: a jazz record (The Genius After Hours, 1961); a blues record (The Genius Sings the Blues, 1961); and a big band record (The Genius of Ray Charles, 1959) which was his first Top 40 album, peaking at No. 17.
His contract with Atlantic expired in 1959, and several big labels offered him record deals. Choosing not to renegotiate his contract with Atlantic, he signed with ABC-Paramount in November 1959. He obtained a more liberal contract than other artists had at the time, with ABC offering him a $50,000 — $443,893 in 2020 dollars — annual advance, higher royalties than before and eventual ownership of his master tapes, a very valuable and lucrative deal at the time. During his Atlantic years, Charles had been hailed for his inventive compositions, but by the time of the release of the largely instrumental jazz album “Genius + Soul = Jazz” in 1960 for ABC's subsidiary label Impulse!, he had given up on writing to follow his eclectic impulses as an interpreter.
With "Georgia on My Mind," his first hit single for ABC-Paramount, in 1960, Charles received national acclaim and four Grammy Awards, including two for "Georgia on My Mind" — Best Vocal Performance Single Record or Track, Male, and Best Performance by a Pop Single Artist. Written by Stuart Gorrell and Hoagy Carmichael, the song was Charles's first work with Sid Feller, who produced, arranged and conducted the recording.
Charles earned another Grammy for the follow-up "Hit the Road Jack," written by R&B singer Percy Mayfield.
By late 1961, Charles had expanded his small road ensemble to a big band, partly as a response to increasing royalties and touring fees, becoming one of the few black artists to cross over into mainstream pop with such a level of creative control. This success, however, came to a momentary halt during a concert tour in November 1961, when a police search of Charles's hotel room in Indianapolis, Indiana, led to the discovery of heroin in the medicine cabinet. The case was eventually dropped, as the search lacked a proper warrant by the police, and Charles soon returned to music.
In the early 1960s, on the way from Louisiana to Oklahoma City, Charles faced a near-death experience when the pilot of his plane lost visibility, as snow and his failure to use the defroster caused the windshield of the plane to become completely covered in ice. The pilot made a few circles in the air before he was finally able to see through a small part of the windshield and land the plane. Charles placed a spiritual interpretation on the event, claiming that "something or someone which instruments cannot detect" was responsible for creating the small opening in the ice on the windshield which enabled the pilot to land the plane safely.
The 1962 album “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music” and its sequel, “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Vol. 2,” helped to bring country music into the musical mainstream. Charles's version of the Don Gibson song "I Can't Stop Loving You" topped the pop chart for five weeks, stayed at No. 1 on the R&B chart for ten weeks, and gave him his only No. 1 record in the UK. In 1962, he founded his record label, Tangerine, which ABC-Paramount promoted and distributed. He had major pop hits in 1963 with "Busted" (US No. 4) and "Take These Chains from My Heart" (US No. 8). In 1964, Margie Hendrix was kicked out of the Raelettes after a big argument.
In 1964, Charles's career was halted once more after he was arrested for a third time for possession of heroin. He agreed to go to rehab to avoid jail time and eventually kicked his habit at a clinic in Los Angeles. After spending a year on parole, Charles reappeared in the charts in 1966 with a series of hits composed with Ashford & Simpson and Jo Armstead — including the dance number "I Don't Need No Doctor" and "Let's Go Get Stoned" — which became his first No. 1 R&B hit in several years. His cover version of "Crying Time," originally recorded by country singer Buck Owens, reached No. 6 on the pop chart and helped Charles win a Grammy Award the following March. In 1967, he had a Top 20 hit with another ballad, "Here We Go Again."
1971-1983: Commercial decline
Charles's renewed chart success, however, proved to be short-lived, and by the 1970s, his music was rarely played on radio stations. The rise of psychedelic rock and harder forms of rock and R&B music had reduced Charles's radio appeal, as did his choosing to record pop standards and covers of contemporary rock and soul hits, since his earnings from owning his masters had taken away the motivation to write new material. Charles nonetheless continued to have an active recording career. Most of his recordings between 1968 and 1973 evoked strong reactions: either adored or panned by fans and critics alike. His recordings during this period, especially 1972's “A Message from the People,” moved toward the progressive soul sound popular at the time. “A Message from the People” included his unique gospel-influenced version of "America the Beautiful" and a number of protest songs about poverty and civil rights. Charles was often criticized for his version of "America the Beautiful" because it was very drastically changed from the song's original version. On July 14, 1973, Margie Hendrix, the mother of Ray's son Charles Wayne Hendrix, died at 38 years old from a heroin overdose, which led to Ray caring for the child.
In 1974, Charles left ABC Records and recorded several albums on his own label, Crossover Records. A 1975 recording of Stevie Wonder's hit "Living for the City" later helped Charles win another Grammy. In 1977, he reunited with Ahmet Ertegun and re-signed to Atlantic Records, for which he recorded the album “True to Life,” remaining with his old label until 1980. However, the label had now begun to focus on rock acts, and some of their prominent soul artists, such as Aretha Franklin, were starting to be neglected. In November 1977 he appeared as the host of the NBC television show Saturday Night Live.
In April 1979, his version of "Georgia on My Mind" was proclaimed the state song of Georgia, and an emotional Charles performed the song on the floor of the state legislature. In 1980 Charles performed in the musical film “The Blues Brothers.” Although he had notably supported the American civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, Charles was criticized for performing at the Sun City resort in South Africa in 1981, during an international boycott protesting that country's apartheid policy. He later defended his choice of performing there after insisting that the audience of black and white fans would integrate while he was there.
1983-2004: Later years
In 1983, Charles signed a contract with Columbia. He recorded a string of country albums and had hit singles in duets with singers such as George Jones, Chet Atkins, B. J. Thomas, Mickey Gilley, Hank Williams Jr., Dee Dee Bridgewater — "Precious Thing" — and his longtime friend Willie Nelson, with whom he recorded "Seven Spanish Angels."
In 1985, Charles participated in the musical recording and video "We Are the World," a charity single recorded by the supergroup United Support of Artists for Africa.
Before the release of his first album for Warner, Would You Believe, Charles made a return to the R&B charts with a cover of the Brothers Johnson's "I'll Be Good to You," a duet with his lifelong friend Quincy Jones and the singer Chaka Khan, which hit No. 1 on the R&B chart in 1990 and won Charles and Khan a Grammy for their duet. Prior to this, Charles returned to the pop charts with "Baby Grand," a duet with the singer Billy Joel. In 1989, he recorded a cover of the Southern All Stars' "Itoshi no Ellie" for a Japanese TV advertisement for the Suntory brand, releasing it in Japan as "Ellie My Love," where it reached No. 3 on its Oricon chart. In the same year he was a special guest at the Arena di Verona during the tour promoting Oro Incenso & Birra of the Italian singer Zucchero Fornaciari.
In 2001–02, Charles appeared in commercials for the New Jersey Lottery to promote its campaign "For every dream, there's a jackpot."
In 2003, he headlined the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, D.C., attended by President George W. Bush, Laura Bush, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.
Also in 2003, Charles presented Van Morrison with Morrison's award upon being inducted in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the two sang Morrison's song "Crazy Love" — the performance appears on Morrison's 2007 album “The Best of Van Morrison Volume 3.” In 2003, Charles performed "Georgia on My Mind" and "America the Beautiful" at a televised annual banquet of electronic media journalists held in Washington, D.C. His final public appearance was on April 30, 2004, at the dedication of his music studio as a historic landmark in Los Angeles.
Influence on music industry
Charles possessed one of the most recognizable voices in American music. In the words of musicologist Henry Pleasants:
Sinatra, and Bing Crosby before him, had been masters of words. Ray Charles is a master of sounds. His records disclose an extraordinary assortment of slurs, glides, turns, shrieks, wails, breaks, shouts, screams and hollers, all wonderfully controlled, disciplined by inspired musicianship, and harnessed to ingenious subtleties of harmony, dynamics and rhythm ... It is either the singing of a man whose vocabulary is inadequate to express what is in his heart and mind or of one whose feelings are too intense for satisfactory verbal or conventionally melodic articulation. He can't tell it to you. He can't even sing it to you. He has to cry out to you or shout to you in tones eloquent of despair — or exaltation. The voice alone, with little assistance from the text or the notated music, conveys the message.
Pleasants continues, "Ray Charles is usually described as a baritone, and his speaking voice would suggest as much, as would the difficulty he experiences in reaching and sustaining the baritone's high E and F in a popular ballad. But the voice undergoes some sort of transfiguration under stress, and in music of gospel or blues character he can and does sing for measures on end in the high tenor range of A, B-flat, B, C and even C-sharp and D, sometimes in full voice, sometimes in an ecstatic head voice, sometimes in falsetto. In falsetto he continues up to E and F above high C. On one extraordinary record, 'I'm Going Down to the River'...he hits an incredible B-flat...giving him an overall range, including the falsetto extension, of at least three octaves."
His style and success in the genres of rhythm and blues and jazz had an influence on a number of highly successful artists, including, as Jon Pareles has noted, Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Van Morrison and Billy Joel. Other singers who have acknowledged Charles's influence on their own styles include James Booker, Steve Winwood, Richard Manuel and Gregg Allman. According to Joe Levy, a music editor for Rolling Stone, "The hit records he made for Atlantic in the mid-1950s mapped out everything that would happen to rock 'n' roll and soul music in the years that followed". Charles was also an inspiration to Pink Floyd member Roger Waters, who told the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet: "I was about 15. In the middle of the night with friends, we were listening to jazz. It was ‘Georgia on My Mind,’ Ray Charles's version. Then I thought 'One day, if I make some people feel only 1/20th of what I am feeling now, it will be quite enough for me.'"
“Ray,” a biopic portraying his life and career between the mid-1930s and 1979, was released in October 2004, starring Jamie Foxx as Charles. Foxx won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Actor for the role.
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