Ray Charles was raised in Greenville, Florida, by his mother. His early life was dogged by tragedy; when he was five years old, he watched his younger brother drown, and by the age of seven, he had lost his sight. But little Ray possessed an incredible self-belief and wanted nothing to do with ‘seeing-eye dogs, canes or guitars.’ In his mind, all three signified blindness and helplessness. Instead, he rode a motorcycle through his town with the swiftness of a sighted person. 

A local shopkeeper, Wylie Pitman (whom Charles addressed as Mr Pit) introduced him to the piano and exponents of boogie-woogie, such as Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, and Meade Lux Lewis. 

Charles reflected in his autobiography that he was able to “reconstruct bits and pieces from my childhood – from all those years listening to the jukebox at Mr Pits”.  Attending a segregated school for the blind and deaf, he studied classical music and learned Chopin and Strauss.  Each Saturday night, he tuned into the Grand Ole Opry to listen to country and bluegrass melodies. 

By the age of fourteen, he could arrange for a whole band and had become an accomplished pianist and singer in the styles of Nat ‘King’ Cole and Charles Brown. It was at this point that his mother died, leaving him an orphan. Over the next two years Charles became a troubadour, literally singing for his supper in Jacksonville, Tampa and Orlando. Moving to the West Coast, he wound up in Seattle, where he met Quincy Jones. The aspiring fourteen-year-old trumpeter was just a couple of years younger than Ray. Thus began a lifelong friendship and musical collaboration.  

The Seattle music scene was small, and on any given night, Ray and Quincy would start playing pop hits between 7-10pm in the white tennis clubs, then at 10 O’clock  they’d go to the black clubs like The Black and Tan and play rhythm and blues, and then 2 o’clock in the morning the musicians would meet at the Elks Club and tear off their ties and play bebop for nothing. Ray and Quincy defied the racism of the times as Jones told David Letterman in 2014, “every day we used to say to the world, ‘Not one drop of my self-worth depends on your opinion of me.’” 

Charles formed a trio and attracted attention from Down Beat (later Swing Beat, then Swing Time) Records founder Jack Lauderdale in 1950, who was the first to record him. His early records, like “Confession Blues”, sold respectably, but they were derivative and bore the traces of his infatuation with Nat Cole.  When his contract came up for sale, it was bought for $2,500 by a little-known New York label called Atlantic Records.  Atlantic was founded by Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun and Herb Abramson, and with Ray Charles they found their first star. 

In 1959, he was reunited with his old friend Quincy Jones, whose big band arrangements on “The Genius of Ray Charles” included musicians from the Count Basie and Duke Ellington bands. His contract with Atlantic expired in late 1959.  ABC Paramount made him a lucrative offer that guaranteed him $50,000 a year, five per cent on his royalties and ownership of his master tapes. The label planned to use Ray Charles to break into the R&B marketplace, but Brother Ray had other ideas.  He produced a concept album entitled “The Genius Hits the Road” featuring songs written about various parts of the United States.  It included a stunning version of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Georgia On My Mind.” 

In late 1960, he started work on an instrumental jazz album that featured big band arrangements by Quincy Jones and Ralph Burns, who had arranged the strings on the hit “Georgia on My Mind.”   Recorded at Rudy Van Gelder Studios in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, and produced by Creed Taylor, “Genius + Soul = Jazz”  was released in 1961 on ABC’s newly minted imprint, Impulse!. The swinging band arrangements featured members of Count Basie’s orchestra, including trumpeters Thad Jones and Joe Newman, tenor saxophonists Billy Mitchell and Frank Wess, guitarist Freddie Green and drummer Sonny Payne. 

Ray Charles played Hammond B3 organ, (as well as piano),  and his organ sound is uniquely raw and dry, with none of the warmth provided by the rotating Leslie speakers made famous by Jimmy Smith’s big band outings of the mid 1960s. The bold, bluesy phrasing on tracks like “Moanin” or “One Mint Julep” has a cutting, dry tone, reminiscent of electric blues guitar.  

During this prolific period, Charles recorded two historic albums entitled “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music Volumes 1, and 2”.  On them, he returned to the white hillbilly music of his youth. “After all, the Grand Ole Opry had been performing in my head since I was a kid in the country”, he recalled. His voice found a new warmth and range on the country albums, which included hits like “Your Cheatin Heart” and “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” The recordings created a precedent for African American artists in country music that Beyoncé continued in 2024 with the release of her “Cowboy Carter” album.

Ray Charles was a unique and defining force in the history of American music. The lasting lesson of his legacy is that the boundaries between country, rhythm and blues and jazz are artificial, and no one can segregate the airwaves. He died on June 19^th, 2004, aged 73.

---

Les Back is a sociologist at the University of Glasgow. He has authored books on music, racism, football and culture, and is a guitarist.

---

_{Header image: Ray Charles. Photo: Paul Hoeffler/Redferns.}