biography
| name: |
Charles, Ray
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originally Ray Charles Robinson
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1930– )
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| biography:
| Singer, pianist, and composer, born in Albany, Georgia, USA. He lost his sight (from glaucoma) when he was six, and attended a school for the blind, where he learned to read and write music in braille and play piano and organ. Orphaned at age 15, he left school and began playing music to earn a living, moving to Seattle in 1947. Dropping his last name, he performed at clubs in the smooth lounge-swing style of Nat ‘King’ Cole. After some hits on Swing Time Records, he switched to Atlantic Records (1952) and began to develop a rougher blues and gospel style. For New Orleans bluesman Guitar Slim, he arranged and played piano on ‘The Things I Used To Do’ (1953); the record sold a million copies. He went on to record his own ‘I've Got a Woman’ (1955) with an arrangement of horns, gospel-style piano, and impassioned vocals that led to the gospel-pop and soul music of the 1960s and to his hit ‘What'd I Say’ (1959). Possessing a multifaceted talent, he recorded with jazz vibist Milt Jackson, made a country-and-western album that sold three million copies (1962), and continued to release a variety of pop hits, Broadway standards, and blues, gospel, and jazz albums. A major influence on popular black music during his early years, he influenced both white musicians and audiences. And although he had been convicted of using drugs in the 1950s, he lived to see the day when he was so acceptable to mainstream Americans that he became virtually the chief image for promoting Pepsi-Cola and was invited to perform at many national patriotic and political events. |
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