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Ray Charles
1930–2004 · 74 years Tier II
He watched his brother drown and then went blind
His mother Aretha had been taken in by a Greenville, Florida, family as a girl, and when the man of the house raped her and she became pregnant she went to relatives in Albany, Georgia, to give birth. She brought the baby back to Greenville and raised him with the wife of the man who had assaulted her. At three he heard Wylie Pitman play boogie-woogie at the Red Wing Cafe, and Pitman started teaching him piano. His younger brother George drowned in their mother's laundry tub at four. His own sight began going at four or five and was gone by seven, probably glaucoma. Aretha, poor and unschooled, found a school that would take a blind Black child. She died when he was 14, and he never went back.
He got out of Florida in 1948 for Seattle, befriended a 15-year-old Quincy Jones, and by 1952 was on Atlantic. Late in 1954 he cut a record that took the shape and the fervor of a gospel side and put worldly words in its mouth — churches objected, the R&B chart did not. What'd I Say followed in 1959. ABC then offered him a 50,000-dollar advance, better royalties and eventual ownership of his own masters, which no Black artist then was getting. Georgia on My Mind in 1960 became the first of his three number ones on the Hot 100, and Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music in 1962 was the first of his albums to top the chart. He put 61 singles into the R&B top 40, 33 into the pop, eight into the country.
He was first arrested in 1955 and again in 1958 and 1961, and on Halloween 1964 the police took him at Boston's Logan Airport with heroin. He went through four days of cold turkey at a hospital in Lynwood, California, and a judge gave him probation instead of prison. He married twice, the first time for under a year and the second for 22, and fathered 12 children by nine women. He gathered all 12 for a luncheon in 2002 and 10 came. In March 1961 he walked away from a dance in Augusta rather than play to a whites-only floor and paid 757 dollars for breaking the contract. Twenty years later he took a booking at Sun City in apartheid South Africa during the boycott, and argued that a mixed audience would be integrated while he was on stage.
In April 1979 the Georgia legislature made his recording of Georgia on My Mind the state song and he sang it on the chamber floor — 18 years after the state's segregated dance floors had cost him a fine. He had a hip replaced in 2003 and meant to tour again. He died at home in Beverly Hills on June 10, 2004, at 73, of complications of liver failure, and B.B. King, Glen Campbell, Stevie Wonder and Wynton Marsalis played him out at First African Methodist Episcopal in Los Angeles. He is buried at Inglewood Park. Genius Loves Company, released after his death, took eight Grammys including album of the year, and Jamie Foxx won an Oscar for playing him.
Lifespan
Ray Charles's life against the full span of the corpus.
Notable works
-
I Got a Woman
song
Issued as I've Got a Woman — gospel form with secular words, and a scandal 1954 -
What'd I Say
song
His first record to reach the pop top 10 1959 -
Georgia on My Mind
song
A Carmichael and Gorrell song from 1930, remade and later made a state song 1960 -
Genius + Soul = Jazz
album
The largely instrumental jazz record for ABC's Impulse label 1960 -
Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music
album
His first album to top the Billboard 200 1962 -
Genius Loves Company
album
Duets, released after his death, and eight Grammys 2004
Life in brief
with age at each point- 1937 aged ~7 Enters the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind at St. Augustine He learned Braille notation, classical piano, saxophone, clarinet and organ.
- Spring 1945 aged ~15 His mother dies and he leaves school at 14 He called his brother's drowning and his mother's death the two great tragedies of his life.
- March 1948 aged 17 Moves to Seattle and meets the teenage Quincy Jones
- 1954 aged ~24 Records I Got a Woman for Atlantic
- March 15, 1961 aged 30 Cancels an Augusta dance over a whites-only floor A promoter sued and he was fined 757 dollars in Atlanta the next year.
- 1962 aged ~32 Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music tops the album chart
- October 31, 1964 aged 34 Arrested with heroin at Boston's Logan Airport Four days of cold turkey in a Lynwood hospital, then probation.
- April 1979 aged 48 Sings Georgia on My Mind to the Georgia legislature as it becomes the state song
- June 10, 2004 aged 73 Dies of liver failure at his home in Beverly Hills
Related
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