More important, he recorded his first song, which he followed the next year with his first national hit on the Black charts (“Baby, Let Me Hold Your Hand”). He also began wearing the dark glasses that would become his trademark. He dropped his last name to avoid possible confusion with the well-known boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. He imitated the smooth vocals of popular singers Charles Brown and Nat King Cole, and wouldn’t develop his own singing style for at least another decade.Īfter his move to Seattle, Washington, in 1948 to pursue better career opportunities on the West Coast, Charles’s show-business persona began to emerge. His early travels took him to nearby Jacksonville and Orlando, Florida, where his reputation grew as a versatile piano player, saxophone player, and arranger who could handle blues, jazz, boogie-woogie, swing, or hillbilly. In 1945 the fifteen-year-old Charles left school to make his living as a professional musician. Over time he also discovered jazz music and a deep appreciation of jazz pianist Art Tatum. At the school for the blind, Charles learned to read music and play Frederic Chopin, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Johann Strauss. Charles also listened to big band music on the radio, along with hillbilly tunes from the Grand Ole Opry. Although no one in his family was a musician (his mostly absent father, Bailey Robinson, was a railroad employee), he found music in every direction: the raw, emotional sounds of gospel music in the church, the jukebox at the general store that blasted out the blues, the boogie-woogie that the store owner would play on piano with the attentive young boy at his side. Augustine, where he remained for nine years, until her death in 1945.Īs Charles describes in his 1978 memoirs, his early years were filled with music. After he was declared legally blind at the age of seven, she enrolled him in the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Despite these setbacks and dire poverty, his mother pushed Charles toward greater independence. In the same year his younger brother drowned. Ray Charles Robinson was born in Albany on September 23, 1930, the same year that Hoagy Carmichael composed “Georgia on My Mind.” A few months after his birth his mother, Aretha Williams, moved with RC (as everybody called the young Charles) to Greenville, a small town in north Florida.Īt the age of five Charles slowly began to lose his sight, most likely as a result of congenital juvenile glaucoma. Over the next forty years, this “old sweet song” remained his signature piece, becoming Georgia’s official state song in 1979. In the popular imagination Ray Charles will probably always be linked with his rendition of “Georgia on My Mind,” his number-one pop hit of 1960. Courtesy of Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries.
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