Ray Charles was a legendary musician often called the "Genius,” who pioneered the genre of soul music during the 1950s.
Charles combined blues, gospel, R&B, rock, country music and jazz to create groundbreaking hits such as “Unchain My Heart,” “I’ve Got A Woman” and “What I’d Say.” His impressive multi-award winning 50-year career left an indelible mark on contemporary music all over the world.
Born Ray Charles Robinson on September 23, 1930, in Albany, Georgia, he was raised in Greenville, Florida, and started playing the piano before he was five. At age six, he contracted glaucoma that eventually left him blind. He studied composition (writing music in Braille) and learned to play the alto saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, and organ while attending the St. Augustine School for the Deaf and the Blind from 1937 to 1945. His father died when he was 10, his mother five years later, and he left school to work in dance bands around Florida, dropping his last name to avoid confusion with boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. In 1947, with $600 he moved to Seattle and worked as a Nat “King” Cole-style crooner.
