Ray Charles (1930–2004) is widely known as the “genius of soul,” but he also occupies a unique and powerful place in country music. Over the course of a career that spanned nearly six decades, Charles embraced R&B, jazz, blues, pop, and country music with equal fervor, and stamped each genre with his soulful style. His landmark album, Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, brought country songs and songwriters to new audiences. Charles made country songs a significant part of his repertoire from the 1960s onward, and he collaborated frequently with country stars, on national television and in the recording studio. Charles overcame barriers of race, class, and disability to transform American popular music and become one of the most revered and recognized entertainers in the world.
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Ray Charles Robinson was born in Albany, Georgia, on September 23, 1930. His mother, Retha Williams, raised him in this house in the small rural town of Greenville, in northwest Florida. Tragedy first struck RC (as he was called) at age five, when he witnessed the drowning death of his younger brother. A few months later, he began to go blind from what was later diagnosed as juvenile glaucoma.
Charles’s mother was a strict disciplinarian who refused to let her son think of himself as disabled. She instilled in him a fierce determination to do almost anything that sighted people could do. Enrolled in the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine, the musically precocious boy learned to read and write music in Braille, play piano and clarinet, and compose musical scores in his head.
Growing up, Ray Charles absorbed musical influences from everywhere. He heard gospel singing at church, down-home blues on the jukebox, and classical music at school. On the radio, he encountered the jazz piano of Art Tatum, the big-band swing of Duke Ellington and Artie Shaw, and the hillbilly tunes of Hank Snow, Roy Acuff, and Hank Williams.
Above all, he fell under the sway of the cool piano blues of Nat "King" Cole and Charles Brown. Ray wrote that he "made many a dollar" playing Brown's 1946 hit "Drifting Blues."
After his mother died in 1945, fifteen-year-old RC Robinson dropped out of school to follow what he called “the light of music.” At sixteen, he joined a local musicians union in Jacksonville, Florida, but often went hungry as he struggled for gigs. In 1946 Charles drifted down to Tampa, where he played piano with Charlie Brantley and His Original Honey Dippers, a regionally popular jump-blues combo. The following year, Charles showed his stylistic range by joining the Florida Playboys, an all-white country band that performed hillbilly hits.
“I could do country music with as much feeling as any southerner. And why not? I’d been hearing it since I was a baby.” — Ray Charles
In 1948, Charles hit the road for Seattle, Washington, where he earned a reputation on the music scene as a talented contender. Within months of his arrival he formed his first group: The McSon Trio (Ray Charles on piano, Gossie McKee on guitar, and Milt Garrett on bass) pictured here at a Seattle radio station. In 1949, Charles cut his first hit record with the group, and, to avoid confusion with the popular boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, began calling himself Ray Charles.
In 1950, Charles relocated to Los Angeles, where his star continued to rise as a recording and touring artist. In 1952, he signed with Atlantic Records, where he forged his own musical identity and became an important stylistic innovator.
Besides being a superb pianist, Charles was quite proficient on saxophone. He played this Selmer Super Action Alto Saxophone at nearly every live performance from the mid-1950s on.
Between 1954 and 1959 he recorded a string of explosive R&B hits—including “I’ve Got a Woman,” “Hallelujah I Love Her So,” and “What’d I Say (Part 1)”—that established him as a primary inventor of soul music, a marriage of gospel music style and worldly lyrics. Mixing the sound of the church with a message of lust scandalized some listeners, but it was an early sign that Charles had no fear when it came to defying musical taboos.
Seeking artistic and financial independence, Charles switched record labels in 1959. He negotiated a deal with ABC-Paramount Records that gave him one of the highest royalty rates of the time, creative license to produce his own records, and ownership of his master recordings.
For the rest of his career, Charles called the shots when it came to selecting and arranging his material, be it country songs, sentimental pop standards, or any other style.
As his business opportunities grew, Ray Charles took on additional responsibility by doubling the size of his band in 1961, achieving his long-time ambition of forming an orchestra modeled after Count Basie and Duke Ellington’s classic big bands. The Ray Charles Orchestra put its swinging imprint on a repertoire that drew from blues, jazz, pop, and country. To the musicians in his band, Charles was a tyrant of perfection who demanded musical mastery equal to his own.
Ray Charles always appeared onstage in immaculately tailored clothes. His lack of sight required that he remain seated at the piano. To compensate for this lack of mobility, Charles wore flashy outfits that made him the undisputed focal point of his shows.
In 1962, Ray Charles recorded the twelve-song concept album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. With the landmark LP, Charles audaciously validated the music of the southern white working class during a time of turmoil and racial divide in America. Charles challenged his record company, his fans, and musical convention, only to gain new fame and introduce country music to a broader audience.
Sid Feller, ABC-Paramount’s A&R director, produced Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. Charles enlisted veteran jazz arrangers Gil Fuller and Gerald Wilson to give his ideas final shape. They wrote the charts for Charles’s newly formed big band, which recorded half of the album in New York. Charles recorded the remaining half in Hollywood, with lush strings and vocal-chorus numbers arranged by Marty Paich. Among the Hollywood recordings was Charles’s cover of Don Gibson’s hit “I Can’t Stop Loving You.”
Modern Sounds ballads “Born to Lose” and “Worried Mind” were written and first popularized in the early 1940s by country bandleader and steel guitarist Ted Daffan.
Ray Charles’s devastating version of “Born to Lose” today is revered as a masterpiece.