Long before my first trumpet lesson, or my first performance with my high school marching band. Decades before my college years performing with the top jazz band, my father introduced me to big band music. I did like the music but found myself sidetracked my The Jackson Five and other R&B acts of the 70s. Of the many albums in my fathers collection, there were several records of Ray Charles. Including the one that I used in the title of this post. The Genius of Ray Charles is widely considered one of the best albums ever recorded by some music critics. It certainly is one of Ray Charles’ best collection of songs.
When I made the decision to feature Ray Charles, I wondered what could I possibly say that has not been said before. There have been many stories written and a motion picture starring Jamie Foxx that covered all aspects of Ray Charles’ life. Because of this exposure, Ray Charles has become iconic in many ways. The dark glasses, rocking while playing the piano and his smile made him recognizable worldwide by sight. His unmistakable singing voice and style allowed us to hear him and immediately know it was Ray Charles singing. When an artist reaches that point he or she has found the pinnacle of fame.
Let’s start by looking at his early years and then discuss why Ray Charles should have been considered a genius.
Ray Charles Robinson was born September 23, 1930 in Albany, Georgia. Charles was deeply devoted to his mother (Aretha Williams, a laundress) and later recalled, despite her poor health and adversity, her perseverance, self-sufficiency, and pride which were guiding lights in his life.In his early years, Charles showed an interest in mechanical objects and would often watch his neighbors working on their cars and farm machinery. His musical curiosity was sparked at Wylie Pitman’s Red Wing Cafe, at the age of three, when Pitman played boogie woogie on an old upright piano; Pitman subsequently taught Charles how to play the piano. Charles and his mother were always welcome at the Red Wing Cafe and even lived there when they were in financial distress. Pitman would also care for Ray’s younger brother George, to take some of the burden off their mother. George drowned in his mother’s laundry tub when he was four years old.
Charles started to lose his sight at the age of four or five, and was blind by the age of seven, apparently as a result of glaucoma. Destitute, uneducated, and mourning the loss of her younger son, Aretha used her connections in the local community to find a school that would accept a blind African-American pupil. Despite his initial protest, Charles attended school at the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine from 1937 to 1945.
Charles further developed his musical talent at school and was taught to play the classical piano music of J.S. Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. His teacher, Mrs. Lawrence, taught him how to use braille music, a difficult process that requires learning the left hand movements by reading braille with the right hand and learning the right hand movements by reading braille with the left hand, and then combining the two parts.
Ray Charles’ mother died in the spring of 1945, when Ray was 14. Her death came as a shock to him; he later said the deaths of his brother and mother were “the two great tragedies” of his life. Charles decided not to return to school after the funeral.
After leaving school Charles moved around a bit seeking work playing the piano. Jobs were very hard to come by at the time after World War II. Finally, Ray Charles decided he needed to move north to a larger city, deciding against Chicago and New York. He followed his friend Gossie McKee to Seattle, Washington, in March 1948, knowing that the biggest radio hits came from northern cities. Here he met and befriended a 15-year-old Quincy Jones.
Things took off for Ray Charles in Seattle. With Charles on piano, McKee on guitar and Milton Garrett on bass, the McSon trio (named for McKee and Robinson) started playing the one-to-five A.M. shift at the Rocking Chair. Publicity photos of the trio are some of the earliest known photographs of Charles. In April 1949, he and his band recorded “Confession Blues”, which became his first national hit, soaring to the second spot on the Billboard R&B chart. While still working at the Rocking Chair, he also arranged songs for other artists, including Cole Porter’s “Ghost of a Chance” and Dizzy Gillespie’s “Emanon”. After the success of his first two singles, Charles moved to Los Angeles in 1950, and spent the next few years touring with the blues musician Lowell Fulson as his musical director.
Ray Charles signed with Swing Time Records and recorded two more hits before the label folded. Ahmet Ertegun signed him to Atlantic Records.
This is the point where Ray Charles’ career took off. The hits came one behind the other and Charles popularity was extremely high. By 1958, he was not only headlining black venues such as the Apollo Theater in New York, but also bigger venues such as Carnegie Hall and the Newport Jazz Festival where his first live album was recorded in 1958. He hired a female singing group, The Cookies, and renamed them The Raelettes. In 1958, Charles and The Raelettes performed for the famed Cavalcade of Jazz concert produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. held at the Shrine Auditorium on August 3.
Charles reached the pinnacle of his success at Atlantic with the release of “What’d I Say”, which combined gospel, jazz, blues and Latin music. Charles said he wrote it spontaneously while he was performing in clubs with his band. Despite some radio stations banning the song because of its sexually suggestive lyrics, the song became his first top ten pop record.
His contract with Atlantic expired in 1959, and several big labels offered him record deals; choosing not to renegotiate his contract with Atlantic, he signed with ABC-Paramount in November 1959. He obtained a more liberal contract than other artists had at the time, with ABC offering him a $50,000 (US$438,527 in 2019 dollars) annual advance, higher royalties than before and eventual ownership of his master tapes—a very valuable and lucrative deal at the time.
At this point many might feel that I am implying that the genius of Ray Charles could be attributed to his music business movements. My thoughts go to the innovation exhibited throughout his time delivering music at Atlantic Records and ABC. Ray Charles had definite ideas of what an audience would like and buy. His feel for the synergy between the various musical genres was well ahead of its time. What he accomplished during the 1950s and 1960s paved the way for the R & B artists and producers musical sounds today. Yes, that “genius” of Ray Charles provided him with a long and successful career. It also has created a sound and musical awareness that will last forever.
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