Ray Charles

Ray Charles
September 23, 1930, June 10, 2004
THE MASTER OF SOUND
Founded his own record label, TANGERINE RECORDS

An iconic and influential genius, vocalist and pianist, bandleader. His style was a gospel combination with southern blues, pop, and country music.

He 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 (5 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 was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, as well as the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame.

Ray Charles was born in Albany, Georgia, on September 23, 1930, to Aretha Robinson a sharecropper, and Bailey Robinson, a railroad repair man, mechanic, and handyman.
When Charles was an infant, his family moved from his birthplace in Albany, Georgia back to his mother’s hometown of Greenville, Florida and he spent his early years there, where he made the acquaintance of a piano-playing neighbor Mr. Wylie Pitman who owned the Red Wing Cafe when Pitman played boogie woogie on an old upright piano.

Pitman subsequently taught Charles how to play piano himself. Charles and his mother were always welcome at the Red Wing Cafe and even lived there when they were experiencing financial difficulties. Pitman would also care for Ray’s brother George, to take the burden off Aretha. George drowned in Aretha’s laundry tub when he was four years old, and Ray was five. Charles started to lose his sight at the age of four or five and was completely blind by the age of seven, apparently as a result of glaucoma. Aretha used her connections in the local community to find a school that would accept Charles who was permanently blind. In her determination to have her child educated she was able to have Charles attend the school at Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine from 1937 to 1945. 1938 Charles Right eye removed in operation; last eyesight gone.

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Charles began to develop his musical talent at school, and was taught to play the classical piano music of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. His teacher Mrs. Lawrence taught him how to read music using Braille, 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 and then synthesizing the two parts. During this time as he would start performing on the campus and on the school radio his mother Aretha died in the spring of 1945, when Charles was 14 years old. Her death came as a shock to Ray, who would later consider the deaths of his brother and mother to be the two great tragedies of his life. Which as we go on led him to drinking and narcotics to numb the pain of the loss of his childhood and family.

After leaving school, Charles moved to Jacksonville with a couple who were friends of his mother. He played the piano for bands at the Ritz Theatre in LaVilla for over a year, earning $4 a night. He also joined the musicians’ union in the hope that it would help him get work. He built a reputation as a talented musician in Jacksonville, but the jobs did not come fast enough for him to construct a strong identity. He decided to leave Jacksonville and move to a bigger city with more opportunities.
At age 16, Charles moved to Orlando where he lived in borderline poverty and went without food for days. In 1947, Charles moved to Tampa, where he had two jobs: one as a pianist for Charlie Brantley Honeydippers. This is where he began his habit of always wearing sunglasses, 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 ThereHe was driven 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, Quincy Jones. He started playing the one-to-five A.M. shift at the Rocking Chair with his band McSon Trio, which featured McKee on guitar and Milton Garrett on bass. In April 1949, Charles and his band recordedConfession 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 Ghost of a Chance and Dizzy Gillespie Emanon. After the success of his first two singles, Charles moved to Los Angeles in 1950 and spent the next few years touring with blues artist Lowell Fulson as his musical director. In 1950, his performance in a Miami hotel would impress Henry Stone. After joining Swing Time Records, he recorded two more R&B hits under the name Ray Charles, Baby, Let Me Hold Your Hand (1951), which reached number five, and Kiss Me Baby(1952), which reached number eight. Swing Time folded the following year, and Ahmet Ertegün signed him to Atlantic Records.

In June 1952, Atlantic Records bought Ray s contract for $2,500. The first recording session with Atlantic The Midnight Hour Roll With My Baby took place in September 1952, although his last Swingtime releases Misery in My Heart and The Snow is Falling would not appear until February 1953. He began recording jump blues and boogie-woogie style recordings as well as slower blues ballads, in which he continued to show the vocal influences of Nat King Cole and Charles Brown Mess Around became Charles first Atlantic hit in 1953; the following year he had hits with It Should Have Been Me and Don’t You Know, which became his first chart success for Atlantic. He also recorded the songs Midnight Hour and Sinner Prayer. Some elements of his own vocal style were evident in Sinner Prayer, Mess Around, You Know Late in 1954, Charles recorded his own composition I Got a Woman the song became one of his most notable hits, reaching number two on the R&B chart. He had hits This Little Girl of Mine and A Fool for You In upcoming years, he scored with ll Drown in My Own Tears and “Hallelujah, I Love Her So By 1959, Ray Charles reached the Billboard

Top Ten with “What’d I Say” which made him a major figure in R&B. Parallel to his R&B career, Charles also recorded instrumental jazz albums such as 1957 The Great Ray Charles. During this time in 1956, Charles recruited a young all-female singing group named the Cookies and reshaped them as The Raelettes. They recorded “This Little Girl of Mine and Drown In My Own Tears Raelette’s first recording session with Charles was on the bluesy-gospel inflected Leave My Woman Alone Charles reached the pinnacle of his success at Atlantic with the release of What I Say eventually Charles Atlantic contract expired in the fall of 1959. Ray Charles negotiated and signed with ABC-Paramount Records in November 1959. In his contract, Ray obtained a much more liberal contract than other artists had at the time, with ABC offering him a $50,000 annual advance, higher royalties than before and eventual ownership of his masters. The Song that went Viral 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. Originally written by composers Stuart Gorrell and Hoagy Carmichael. 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 full-scale big band partly as a response to increasing royalties and touring fees, becoming one of the few black artists to crossover into mainstream pop with such a level of creative control. Things started to become very hard for Charles and his abuse of drugs and alcohol started its toll on him. His success almost collapsed when it suddenly became to a momentary halt during a concert tour in November 1961, when a police search of Charles’ hotel room in Indianapolis, Indiana, led to the discovery of heroin in his medicine cabinet. The case was eventually dropped, as the search lacked a proper warrant by the police, and Charles soon returned to music.

As a youngster, Charles apprenticed with him at his small store-cum-juke joint while digesting the blues, boogie- woogie and big-band swing records on his jukebox. At age six, he contracted glaucoma, which eventually left him blind. Charles studied composition and mastered a variety of instruments, piano and saxophone principal among them, during nine years spent at the St. Augustine School for the Deaf and the Blind. Thereafter, he played around Florida in a variety of bands and then headed for the West Coast, where he led a jazz-blues trio that performed in the polished style of Nat “King” Cole and Charles Brown. After cutting singles for labels such as Downbeat and Swingtime, Charles wound up on Atlantic Records in 1952. It turned out to be an ideal match between artist and label, as both were just beginning to find their feet.
Given artistic control at Atlantic after demonstrating his knack as an arranger with Guitar Slim’s “Things That I Used to Do” — the biggest R&B hit of 1954 — Charles responded with a string of recordings in which he truly found his voice. This extended hit streak, which carried him through the end of the decade, included such unbridled R& B milestones as “I Got a Woman,” “Hallelujah I Love Her So,” “Drown in My Own Tears” and the feverish call-and-response classic “What’d I Say.” All were sung in Charles’ gruff, soulful voice and accompanied by the percussive punctuations of his piano and a horn section. After his groundbreaking Atlantic years, Charles moved to ABC/Paramount, where he claimed the unlikeliest of genres as his own with Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, an album that topped the Billboard chart for 14 weeks in 1962.

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 the country 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 in the R&B chart for ten weeks, and also gave him his only number-one record in the UK. In 1962. This world crossover hit made him an international icon. He founded his own record label, TANGERINE RECORDS, which ABC-Paramount promoted and distributed. He had major pop hits in 1963 with Busted (US No. 4) and Take TheseChains From My Heart (US No. 8). His 1972 album, A Message from the People, included his unique gospel-influenced version of “America the Beautiful as well as a number of protest songs about poverty and civil rights. In 1974, Charles left ABC Records and recorded several albums on his own Crossover Records label. A 1975 recording of Stevie Wonder’s hit “Living for the City earned Charles another Grammy. In 1977, he reunited with Ahmet Ertegün and re-signed to Atlantic Records, where he recorded the album True to Life, remaining with his old label until 1980. In April 1979, Charles’s 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. Although he had notably supported the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1981 Charles was criticized for performing at South Africa’s Sun City resort during an international boycott of its apartheid policy.

In 1983, Charles signed a contract with Columbia Records. He recorded a string of country albums, as well as having single hits with duets. Charles’s 1993 album, My World, became his first album in some time to reach the Billboard 200, with his cover of Leon Russell’s A Song for You would give him a hit on the adult contemporary chart as well as his twelfth and final Grammy.
Charles appeared at two separate Presidential inaugurations, performing for Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration in 1985, and for Bill Clinton’s first in 1993. On October 28, 2001, several weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, Charles appeared during Game 2 of the World Series and performed America the Beautiful throughout his career, Charles never stopped pursuing that uncategorizable blend of idioms that is best described with a single word: soul. And just what is the soul, according to Ray Charles? As he told Time magazine in 1968: “It’s a force that can light a room. The force radiates from a sense of selfhood, a sense of knowing where you’ve been and what it means. The soul is a way of life – but it’s always the hard way.

Ray Charles was married twice and had twelve children with nine different women. Charles’s first child Evelyn was born in 1949 to his significant other, Louise Flowers.
Charles’s first marriage was to Eileen Williams Robinson and lasted from July 31, 1951, to 1952.
Charles’s second marriage to Della Beatrice Howard Robinson began on April 5, 1955, and lasted 22 years. Their first child together, Ray Jr., was born in 1955. Charles was not in town for the birth as he was playing a show in Texas. The couple had two more children, David (1958) and Robert (1960). During their marriage, Charles felt that his heroin addiction took a toll on Della. Charles had a six-year-long affair with Margie Hendricks, one of the original Raelettes, and in 1959 the pair had a son together, Charles Wayne. His experience with Mae Mosely Lyles resulted in another daughter, Renee, born in 1961. In 1963, Charles had a daughter, Sheila Jean Robinson, with Sandra Jean Betts. In 1966, Charles’ daughter Aretha was born to a woman who remains unidentified, and another daughter, Alexandra, was also born to Chantal Bertrand. Charles divorced Della Howard in 1977, and later that year Charles had a son, Vincent, with Arlette Kotchounian. A daughter, Robyn, was born a year later to Gloria Moffett. Charles’s youngest child, son Ryan Corey den Bok, was born in 1987 to Mary Anne den Bok. One of Charle’s long-term girlfriends at the time of his death was Norma Pinella.

Charles remained active as a performer and recording artist right up to his death from liver disease on June 10, 2004 Ray Charles passed away at his home in Beverly Hills, California at age 73 surrounded by his family and dearest friends. The cause of his death was a liver disease which shortly happened after his 2003 hip replacement surgery. His funeral took place on June 18, 2004, at the First AME Church in Los Angeles.
The 2004 film Ray was released several months after his death.
His final album, Genius Loves Company, was released two months after his death and consists of duets. The album won eight Grammy Awards, including Best Pop Vocal Album, Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for Here We Go Again with Norah Jones, and Best Gospel Performance for Heaven Help Us All with Gladys Knight.
Two more posthumous albums were released: Genius Friends (2005), a selection of duets recorded from 1997 to 2004 and Ray Sings, Basie Swings (2006), which combined archive Ray Charles live vocal performances from the mid-
1970s recorded from the concert mixing board with new instrumental tracks specially recorded by the contemporary Count Basie Orchestra.

Honors
In 1979, Charles was one of the first musicians born in the state to be inducted into the Georgia State Music Hall of Fame.
Ray Charles Georgia On My Mind was also made the official state song for Georgia.
In 1981 he was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and one of the first inductees to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame at its inaugural ceremony
In 1986 He received the Kennedy Center Honors
In 1987, he was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement
Awards
In 1991, he was inducted to the Rhythm & Blues Foundation and was presented with the George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement during the 1991 UCLA Spring Sing.
In 1993, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
In 1998 he was awarded the Polar Music Prize
In 2004 he was inducted to the National Black Sports
Entertainment Hall of Fame.
The Grammy Awards show of 2005 was dedicated to Ray Charles.
In 2003, Charles was awarded an honorary degree by Dillard
University, and upon his death he endowed a professorship of African-American culinary history at the school, the first such chair in the nation.

In the 2004 film, Ray
On December 7, 2007, Ray Charles Plaza was opened in
Albany, Georgia, with a revolving, lighted bronze sculpture of Charles seated at a piano.
In September 2010 a $20 million performing arts center at Morehouse College was named after Charles.
The United States Postal Service issued a forever stamp honoring Ray Charles as part of it Musical Icons series on September 23, 2013

Humanitarian
Ray Charles Founded in 1986, the Ray Charles Foundation maintains the mission statement of financially supporting institutions and organizations in the research of hearing disorders. Recipients of donations include Benedict College, Morehouse College, and numerous other universities. The foundation has previously taken action against donation recipients who do not use funds in accordance with its mission statement, such as the Albany State University which was made to return its $3 Million donation after not using its funds for over a decade. The foundation currently houses its executive offices at the historic RPM International Building, originally the home of Ray Charles Enterprises, Inc, and now also home to the Ray Charles Memorial Library on the first floor, which was founded on September 23, 2010 (what would have been Charles 80th birthday). The library was founded to “provide an avenue for young children to experience music and art in a way that will inspire their creativity and imagination and is not open to the public without reservation, as the main goal is to educate mass groups of underprivileged youth and provide art and historyto those without access to such documents.