Ray Charles: music legend 1930-2004

Jet, June 28, 2004

Music lovers are mourning the death of icon Ray Charles, who blended gospel and blues in such classics as What'd I Say and Georgia on My Mind.

Charles recently died of acute liver disease at his home in Beverly Hills, surrounded by family and friends, spokesman Jerry Digney said. Ray Charles was 73.

Joe Adams, the entertainer's manager for 45 years, said at a press conference: "Mr. Charles was conscious and engaged almost to the end and wanted the world to know that he will miss the chance to entertain his many fans and friends, as he had done up until last summer, for the past 58 years."

Charles' last public appearance was alongside actress Cicely Tyson and actor Clint Eastwood on April 30, when the city of Los Angeles designated the singer's studios, built 40 years ago in central Los Angeles, as a historic landmark.

Adams recalled, "What I loved most about Ray was Iris plain-speaking approach to life. You always knew where you stood with Ray ... Despite his enormous success, artistically and financially, he was a humble man. He never traveled with an entourage. He was always available to friends and fans. He was a man of the people. He loved America, despite its imperfections and, in turn, the country was wonderful to him. He was a poor Black boy from Georgia who went blind at 7 and yet went on to become a music icon for all the world to embrace."

A gifted singer-pianist-songwriter, he performed everything--country, jazz, big band and blues and soul, and put his stamp on it all with a distinctive, deep, warm voice.

"I was born with music inside me," Charles said in his 1978 autobiography, Brother Ray. "That's the only explanation I know of. 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."

The 12-time Grammy winner enjoyed such bits as Hit the Road Jack, Can t Stop Loving You and Busted. His other well-known tunes include a stirring, soulful rendition of America the Beautiful and Makin ' Whoopee. Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell wrote Georgia on My Mind in 1931, and Charles turned it into an American standard in 1967. It became Georgia's official state song in 1979.

He was happiest playing music, smiling and swaying behind the piano as his legs waved in rhythmic joy. His appeal spanned generations. In 1961 he recorded the landmark album, Ray Charles and Betty Carter featuring the hit duet, Baby, It's Cold Outside.

He also teamed up with such musicians as his good friends Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton. Elton John, B.B. King, Johnny Mathis and Tony Bennett. He also appeared in movies including The Blues Brothers. Pepsi tapped him for TV spots around a simple "uh huh" theme, perhaps playing off the grunts and moans that pepper his songs.

"The way I see it, we're actors, but musical ones," he once said. "We're doing it with notes, and lyrics with notes, telling a story. I can take an audience and get 'em into a frenzy so they'll almost riot, and yet I can sit there so you can almost hear a pin drop."

His early musical influences included such diverse names as Chopin and Sibelus, country and western stars from the Grand Ole Opry, the big bands of Duke Ellington and Count Basie and jazz greats Art Tatum and Artie Shaw.

Ray Charles Robinson was born in Albany, GA, on Sept. 23, 1930. His father, Bailey Robinson, was a mechanic and a handyman, and his mother, Aretha Robinson, stacked boards in a sawmill. His family moved to Gainesville, FL, when Charles was an infant.

"Talk about poor," Charles once said. "We were on the bottom of the ladder." He said the family "ate everything on the pig but the oink."

Charles saw his brother drown in the tub his mother used to do laundry when he was about 5 as the family struggled through poverty at the height of the Depression.

His sight was gone two years later. Glaucoma is often mentioned as a cause, though Charles said nothing was ever diagnosed. He said his mother never let him wallow in pity.

When he went blind, she told him: "No dog, no cane, no guitar."

Inspired by the advice and love of a great, wise mother, Charles went on to become an internationally acclaimed entertainer who never let his blindness hinder him.

He shared with JET what his mother told him: '"OK, you're blind. Now that just means there are at least two ways to do everything. You just have to find that second way ... Whatever happens to you is up to you ...'" His mother also told him: 'You're blind, you ain't dumb. You lost your sight, not your mind.'"

He wrote in his autobiography: "When the doctors told her that I was gradually losing my sight, and that I wasn't going to get any better, she started helping me deal with it by showing me how to get around, how to find things. That made it a little bit easier to deal with."

He began dabbling in music at 3, encouraged by a cafe owner who played the piano. The knowledge was basic, but he was that much more prepared for music classes when he was sent away years later to the state-supported St. Augustine School for the Deaf and the Blind.