Post by Ms. Kathy on Jun 20, 2004 4:02:22 GMT -6
Info from the official Ray Charles web site at www.raycharles.com/
"I was born with music inside me. That's the only explanation I know of..." he remarks in his autobiography.
"Music was one of my parts... Like my blood. It was a force already with me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me - like food or water."
"Music is nothing separate from me. It is me... You'd have to remove the music surgically."
Ray Charles Robinson was not born blind, only poor.
The first child of Aretha and Baily Robinson was born in Albany, GA, on September 23, 1930.
He hit the road early, at about three months, when the Robinsons moved across the border to Greenville, FL. It was the height of the Depression years. And the Robinsons had started out poor.
"you hear folks talking about being poor," Charles recounts. "Even compared to other blacks. . . we were on the bottom of the ladder looking up at everyone else. Nothing below us except the ground."
It took three years, starting when Ray Charles was four, for the country boy who loved to look at the blazing sun at its height, the boy who loved to try to catch lightning, the boy who loved to strike matches to see their fierce, brief glare, to travel the path from light to darkness.
But Ray Charles has almost seven years of sight memory - colors, the things of the backwoods country, and the face of the most important person in his life: his mother, Aretha Robinson.
St. Augustine's was the Florida state school for the deaf and blind. Ray Charles was accepted as a charity student.
He learned to read Braille and to type. He became a skilled basket weaver. He was allowed to develop his great gift of music.
He discovered mathematics and its correlation to music. He learned to compose and arrange music in his head, telling out the parts, one by one.
He remained at St. Augustine's until his mother's death when he set out "on the road again" for the first time as a struggling professional musician.
The road to greatness was no picnic, proverbial or literal. In fact, while earning his dues around and about Florida, he almost starved at times, hanging around at various Musicians' Locals, picking up gigs when he could.
He began to build himself a solo act, imitating Nat "King" Cole. When he knew it was time to head on, he asked a friend to find him the farthest point from Florida on a map of the continental U.S.
Seattle, WA. For Ray Charles, the turning point.
In Seattle he became a minor celebrity in local clubs. There he met an even younger musician, Quincy Jones, whom he took under his wing, marking the beginning of an inter-twining of two musical lifetimes...
It was from Seattle that he went to Los Angeles to cut his first professional recording. And it was in Seattle, with Gossady McGee, that he formed the McSon Trio -- Robin (son) and (Mc) Gee -- in 1948, the first black group to have a sponsored TV show in the Pacific Northwest.
Along the way he'd shortened his name in deference to the success of "Sugar" Ray Robinson.
Rhythm & blues (or "race music" as it had been called) became universally respectable through his efforts. Jazz found a mainstream audience it had never previously enjoyed. And country & western music began to chart an unexpected course to general acceptance, then worldwide popularity. Along the way Ray Charles was instrumental in the invention of rock & roll.
Read this biography in it's entirety at www.raycharles.com
Ray Charles died on Thursday July 10 at the age of 73. Read the obit at CNN.com at www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Music/06/10/obit.ray.charles.ap/index.html
"I was born with music inside me. That's the only explanation I know of..." he remarks in his autobiography.
"Music was one of my parts... Like my blood. It was a force already with me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me - like food or water."
"Music is nothing separate from me. It is me... You'd have to remove the music surgically."
Ray Charles Robinson was not born blind, only poor.
The first child of Aretha and Baily Robinson was born in Albany, GA, on September 23, 1930.
He hit the road early, at about three months, when the Robinsons moved across the border to Greenville, FL. It was the height of the Depression years. And the Robinsons had started out poor.
"you hear folks talking about being poor," Charles recounts. "Even compared to other blacks. . . we were on the bottom of the ladder looking up at everyone else. Nothing below us except the ground."
It took three years, starting when Ray Charles was four, for the country boy who loved to look at the blazing sun at its height, the boy who loved to try to catch lightning, the boy who loved to strike matches to see their fierce, brief glare, to travel the path from light to darkness.
But Ray Charles has almost seven years of sight memory - colors, the things of the backwoods country, and the face of the most important person in his life: his mother, Aretha Robinson.
St. Augustine's was the Florida state school for the deaf and blind. Ray Charles was accepted as a charity student.
He learned to read Braille and to type. He became a skilled basket weaver. He was allowed to develop his great gift of music.
He discovered mathematics and its correlation to music. He learned to compose and arrange music in his head, telling out the parts, one by one.
He remained at St. Augustine's until his mother's death when he set out "on the road again" for the first time as a struggling professional musician.
The road to greatness was no picnic, proverbial or literal. In fact, while earning his dues around and about Florida, he almost starved at times, hanging around at various Musicians' Locals, picking up gigs when he could.
He began to build himself a solo act, imitating Nat "King" Cole. When he knew it was time to head on, he asked a friend to find him the farthest point from Florida on a map of the continental U.S.
Seattle, WA. For Ray Charles, the turning point.
In Seattle he became a minor celebrity in local clubs. There he met an even younger musician, Quincy Jones, whom he took under his wing, marking the beginning of an inter-twining of two musical lifetimes...
It was from Seattle that he went to Los Angeles to cut his first professional recording. And it was in Seattle, with Gossady McGee, that he formed the McSon Trio -- Robin (son) and (Mc) Gee -- in 1948, the first black group to have a sponsored TV show in the Pacific Northwest.
Along the way he'd shortened his name in deference to the success of "Sugar" Ray Robinson.
Rhythm & blues (or "race music" as it had been called) became universally respectable through his efforts. Jazz found a mainstream audience it had never previously enjoyed. And country & western music began to chart an unexpected course to general acceptance, then worldwide popularity. Along the way Ray Charles was instrumental in the invention of rock & roll.
Read this biography in it's entirety at www.raycharles.com
Ray Charles died on Thursday July 10 at the age of 73. Read the obit at CNN.com at www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Music/06/10/obit.ray.charles.ap/index.html