Charles, Ray (Ray Charles Robinson)
1930-2004 · Contribution: 1954-1962
Pioneered soul music by fusing gospel, rhythm and blues, and jazz, earning the nickname “The Genius” and becoming one of the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, with signature hits including “I've Got a Woman,” “What'd I Say,” and “Georgia on My Mind”
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Impact on the world
Blind by age seven after childhood glaucoma, Charles developed a style that fused the raw emotional urgency of gospel music with rhythm and blues, a combination that essentially created the soul genre when he signed with Atlantic Records in 1954; his 1959 hit “What'd I Say” became his first million-selling single. He further broke genre boundaries with 1962's Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, a chart-topping album that helped bring country music to a broader mainstream audience and produced the number-one hit “I Can't Stop Loving You.” His 1960 recording of “Georgia on My Mind” won four Grammy Awards and was later made the official state song of Georgia, which he performed live on the floor of the state legislature in 1979 after having refused, in 1961, to perform for a segregated audience in Augusta, a stand that resulted in a lawsuit and fine. Charles won 17 Grammy Awards during his career plus five posthumously, received the Kennedy Center Honors and National Medal of Arts, and in 2022 became the third African American inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Life & background
Born Ray Charles Robinson on September 23, 1930, in Albany, Georgia, and raised in extreme poverty in Greenville, Florida, Charles attended the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind, where he mastered piano, saxophone, clarinet, and trumpet in braille notation. He recorded more than sixty albums over five decades and died of acute liver disease in Beverly Hills, California, on June 10, 2004, at age 73.
Sources
- Encyclopædia Britannica; New Georgia Encyclopedia
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