Leaving school at 14, in the early years he often lived in poverty and went without food for days while trying to make ends meet as a musician. although he was much more interested in the jazz, blues, and country music he heard on the radio. Though already proficient in boogie woogie, it was at this school where Charles learned to play classical piano and read music using braille. Unable to cope with the loss, Charles’ mother, Aretha, used her connections in the local community to get Charles’ into one of the few schools that would accept blind African-American students.Īretha believed “her son was blind, not stupid, and he must continue to learn to do things, not only for himself, but for others as well”. Throughout his life, Charles remained deeply devoted to his mother and later recalled her perseverance, self-sufficiency, and pride as his guiding principles. The Cafe’s owner allowed the family to live there when they were experiencing financial difficulties and would even care for Charles’ younger brother George to help ease the burden, but George tragically drowned in a laundry tub at the age of 4, around the time Ray started to lose his sight.
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He was the son of a labourer and a teenage orphan sharecropper who ‘scandalously’ became pregnant. By the age of seven, he had lost both his younger brother and his eyesight.Īt the age of three, Wylie Pitman’s boogie woogie at the Red Wing Cafe piqued Charles’ curiosity enough that he learned how to play on the old upright piano. Ray Charles Robinson’s life (Septem– June 10, 2004) was marked by early tragedy and later troubles. but there was nothing simple about Ray Charles or his music. In addition to being one of the first African-American musicians to be granted artistic control which allowed him the freedom to crossover into mainstream pop, he was also offered a large annual advance, higher than usual royalties, and the almost unheard of ownership of his masters.īut despite his ingenuity, he wasn’t immune to the changing times – he experienced ebbs and flows as popular tastes changed, although he never stopped re-inventing what his music could be.įrank Sinatra believed that he was “The only true genius in show business”.
He was on the cutting edge of the development of soul music in the 1950s and integral to the integration of country with other styles during the 1960s. In an effort to have his listener ‘feel’ his message, he filled his recordings with slurs, glides, shrieks, wails, breaks, shouts, hollers and more. It would be impossible to classify him in a single genre. Known as “The Genius” the world over, he was simply “Brother Ray” to friends and fellow musicians.
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