Ray Charles
Soul Singer — born 1930
Ray Charles was a popular American singer, songwriter and was the discoverer of soul music.
Ray Charles was an American singer, songwriter, and pianist whose six-decade music career produced one of the foundational documents of 20th-century American R&B-and-soul music — particularly his 1959 single "What'd I Say" and his 1962 album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. He was born Ray Charles Robinson on September 23, 1930, in Albany, Georgia, into an African-American working-class family. His father Bailey Robinson was a Greenville, Florida-area mechanic and railroad-yard repairman, and his mother Aretha Williams was a homemaker. The 1937 sudden death of his five-year-old brother George Robinson by accidental drowning in a Greenville, Florida laundry tub shaped his early-life biographical narrative.
His childhood glaucoma — across which he gradually lost his eyesight from age four to age seven — produced his 1937 St. Augustine, Florida School for the Deaf and Blind enrollment. His 1937–1945 St. Augustine school education produced his early-career classical-piano-and-music-theory training.
His 1947 Seattle relocation at age 17 and his 1948 first Seattle commercial-recording band (the McSon Trio) launched his early-career American R&B public profile. His 1952 Atlantic Records signing under producer Ahmet Ertegün produced his 1950s American R&B and soul-music breakthrough.
His 1959 single "What'd I Say" — released June 1959 by Atlantic Records — launched his 1959–1965 American R&B-and-soul-music commercial peak. The 1959 single combined his characteristic R&B piano-vocal-and-call-and-response style with foundational gospel-music influences — producing one of the foundational documents of late-1950s American R&B and soul music. His 1962 album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music — released April 1962 by ABC-Paramount Records — produced his American country-and-western-genre-crossover public profile.
The 1962 album sold over 500,000 American copies in its first year of release and produced his single "I Can't Stop Loving You" (which won the 1963 Grammy Award for Best Rhythm and Blues Recording). He died on June 10, 2004, at age 73, in Beverly Hills, California, of liver disease. The 2004 Taylor Hackford biographical film Ray — in which Jamie Foxx played Charles — won the 2005 Best Actor Academy Award for Foxx and grossed $124 million worldwide.
His name Ray is the English short form of Raymond (from the Old Germanic root meaning "counselor protector"). Ray was a popular American boys' name across the early-to-mid-20th century.