A Look at Ray Charles

“Ah, your story don’t ring true lil’ girl. Yeah, I’ve got news for you, baby.”

It was Sept. 23, 1930 when Ray Charles Robinson, better known by Ray Charles, was born to Aretha Williams and Baily Robinson in Georgia.

Both worked low-paying jobs. In the midst of the depression, his mother was a sharecropper and his father repaired railroad tracks.

Even worse, Ray witnessed his older brother drown at age five, and then Ray turned blind at age seven, both key scenes in the Oscar Winning Motion picture Ray.

Nevertheless, he did not give up and went on to live in his native Greenville, Fla. and continued to St. Augustine Fla., where he received a musical education.

He was immediately influenced by the stars of that time.

Duke Ellington and Art Tatum were two of those inspirations.

Another setback occurred at age 15, when Ray’s mother died.

Once again, he didn’t let a dramatic circumstance get him down and instead of begging for money he decided to drop out of school and tour the country which granted him financial independence.

Although he got to know lifelong friend Quincy Jones while traveling to Seattle, he returned to Florida in 1947, where he recorded his first three songs in Tampa.

In 1953, he was able to secure a contract with Atlantic Records and already sold more than one million copies of The Things I Used to Do the following year.

From then on, his career kept on getting better.

The following year, 1954, he released I Got a Woman, which would become one of the songs everybody would associate with him.

He continued blending different African-American music styles,  What’d I Say being one example.

The single sold millions of records and again reached no. 1 in the R&B charts in 1959.

Just two years later, in 1961, he would go on to release Hit The Road Jack, leading him to receive a grammy.

He would then go on to receive 11 more of these coveted awards.

From the ‘60s until his death in June 2004, he not only crossed the different genres of African-American music, but also went on to rearrange the country and western genres.

Ray Charles proved to be more than a person of integrity and honor by overcoming his complicated childhood, having 12 children and reaching the age of 74 despite an intense heroin addiction and getting banned and readmitted to perform in the state of Georgia.