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Charted: #1 in October 1960
Performed By: Ray Charles
Ray Charles Robinson was born on September 23, 1930, in Albany, Georgia, and raised in Greenville, Florida. He was born to a woman who was having an affair with his father, but his father soon abandoned his wife and his mistress, leaving the two women to band together and raise young Ray by themselves. Music became an obsession, and he learned to play some piano from a neighbor who happened to own an old upright. Living in a backwoods rural area that was thoroughly isolated from urban amenities, life was often very harsh and could sometimes be cruel. At age five, he witnessed the drowning of his younger brother. Soon after, his eyesight began to slip away. Without proper medical care, his illness progressed irreversibly, and within two years he was completely blind.
To assure that he’d learn to read and write, Charles was sent to the State School for the Blind in St. Augustine. His mother instilled a sense of independence in him, and despite his blindness, he managed to get by quite well, even learning how to ride a bicycle. He continued to pursue music, particularly the piano, and his instructors taught him light classics as well as the popular songs of the day. When he was fifteen, his mother died. Despondent and alone, he moved to Jacksonville and played boogie-woogie and hillbilly songs in local union halls. He also learned to write arrangements. At this time in his life, Charles was barely scraping by. He worked in Orlando and Tampa but needed a change. Deciding that Seattle was about as far from Florida as you can get without leaving the country, he packed up and headed northwest.
Work came fast in Seattle, and Charles soon formed the McSon trio. To avoid any confusion between himself and Sugar Ray Robinson, he dropped his last name and became Ray Charles. Famous boxers, though, posed less of a threat than did other famous singers. His early style betrayed his emulation of Nat “King” Cole and Charles Brown, as can be heard on his recordings from this time on Swingtime Records. His talent was obvious, but he had yet to find his own voice. Meanwhile, Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson with Atlantic Records were actively expanding their roster of artists and offered Swingtime the not inconsiderable sum of $2,500 to buy Ray Charles from his contract.
Initial attempts at fitting Charles into the same mold as the other Atlantic artists were less than successful. He was uncomfortable with the tight control Ertegun and Abramson held, supplying all the material and arrangements for his sessions, and he expressed a desire to operate with more independence. Atlantic trusted his instinct and took a calculated risk in giving Charles a wide berth. He immediately formed his own band and then took responsibility for his arrangements. Soon enough, a definite style emerged.
Part of Charles’s style proved to be controversial. His combination of sanctified gospel and wailing sexual blues caused him problems with a segment of the R&B market because they took offense to God’s music serving the devil’s purpose. To Charles, it was a natural extension of his abilities, but it didn’t help when he had the audacity to rewrite gospel standards with updated secular words. He was not only using gospel stylization (which Clyde McPhatter was also using), but he was using their sacred songs to sing about sexual relationships! Numerous R&B hits were the result, and it was only a matter of time before Charles found the right sound and reached the pop Top 10 with “What’d I Say.”
Charles had always harbored a desire to combine his R&B sound with strings. Since he had achieved more than a measure of success, Atlantic Records let him do as he pleased. Jazz records, big band recordings, and string-laden pop all entered his repertoire. The ballads in particular had a timeless quality that made his versions definitive, no matter how shopworn the song may have been.
At the end of 1959, Charles signed with ABC Paramount, which swayed him away from Atlantic with a better deal and the promise of the same artistic freedom. Picking up exactly where he left off with Atlantic, he recorded “Georgia on My Mind,” which quickly became his first #1 record. It was written by Hoagy Carmichael (“Stardust”) and Stuart Gorrell in 1930 and had already been recorded innumerable times. No matter how many people may have recorded it before Charles, however, the song is now forever his. “Soulful” is not a strong enough word for his performance. It is transcendent. A few recklessly foolish artists have attempted to rerecord “Georgia” since, but they pale in comparison. Michael Bolton in particular deserves to be singled out for his bald(ing) attempt to reproduce something that cannot be duplicated. Truly an indigenous icon, Charles left his imprint on practically anything he sang. Despite shoddy attempts by lesser artists to rewrite our musical legacy, Ray Charles outshone them all.
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