Few artists played a larger part in shaping soul music than Ray Charles. Although Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson helped lay early groundwork for the style, Charles went further still by forging a fresh strain of Black pop that blended 1950s R&B with vocals rooted in gospel, while drawing additional color from jazz and blues of the period and from country music once the 1960s arrived. His singing ranked among the most passionately expressive and instantly recognizable voices of any twentieth-century performer, sharing that rare status with Elvis and Billie Holiday. He also proved himself an exceptional keyboardist, arranger, and bandleader. Even so, the unmatched strength of his 1950s and 1960s recordings cannot hide the reality that he issued few enduring tracks after the mid-1960s, despite maintaining a steady pace of studio work and continuing to perform live until the year before he died.
Having lost his sight to glaucoma at age six, Charles received training in composition and mastered several instruments while attending the St. Augustine School for the Deaf and the Blind. Both parents had passed away by the time he reached his early teens, after which he spent a period working as a musician in Florida before spending his earnings to relocate to Seattle in 1947. By the close of the 1940s he was cutting sides in a polished pop-and-R&B manner modeled on Nat “King” Cole and Charles Brown. His initial Top Ten R&B single, “Baby, Let Me Hold Your Hand,” arrived in 1951. Those early efforts drew criticism for sounding gentler and less distinctive than the landmark performances that would soon follow, yet they remain engaging in their own right and already display clear signs of the abilities that would soon fully emerge.
During the first half of the 1950s, Charles’s approach grew tougher as he traveled with Lowell Fulson, spent time in New Orleans supporting Guitar Slim—where he played piano and arranged the massive R&B success “The Things That I Used to Do”—and assembled a band for R&B star Ruth Brown. It was at Atlantic Records that he truly discovered his artistic identity, building on the progress of prior years with “I Got a Woman,” which reached number two on the R&B chart in 1955. That performance is frequently cited as his decisive breakthrough, the moment when Charles first unleashed his unmistakable gospel-inflected cry over a compact, lively horn arrangement.
Across the remainder of the decade he delivered a string of R&B successes that, although the term “soul” had not yet been applied, helped lay the foundation for the genre by offering a version of R&B that remained refined without losing raw emotional force. “This Little Girl of Mine,” “Drown in My Own Tears,” “Hallelujah I Love Her So,” “Lonely Avenue,” and “The Right Time” all achieved substantial chart success. Charles did not reach the broader pop audience, however, until “What’d I Say,” which channeled the intensity of church music through its fervent vocals while also capturing rock & roll energy with its memorable electric-piano riff. The track became his first Top Ten pop single and one of his last releases for Atlantic before he departed for ABC at the end of the 1950s.
A key benefit of the ABC contract was the expanded creative freedom it granted. Charles used that liberty effectively on early-1960s hits such as “Unchain My Heart” and “Hit the Road Jack,” which reinforced his status as a pop star while applying only modest refinement to the R&B sound he had honed at Atlantic. In 1962 he startled the pop world by embracing country & western material, reaching the top of the charts with the single “I Can’t Stop Loving You” and releasing the enormously successful album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music at a time when R&B and soul LPs seldom performed strongly on the charts. The move may have been less unexpected than it appeared; Charles had long demonstrated eclectic tastes, having already recorded a considerable amount of straight jazz at Atlantic alongside notable jazz musicians including David “Fathead” Newman and Milt Jackson.
He stayed highly popular through the middle of the 1960s, logging major hits with “Busted,” “You Are My Sunshine,” “Take These Chains From My Heart,” and “Crying Time,” although a 1965 heroin arrest interrupted his momentum and resulted in a year-long hiatus from live performances. He resumed activity with “Let’s Go Get Stoned” in 1966. By then, however, his focus had shifted away from rock and soul toward pop songs, frequently featuring string arrangements and seemingly tailored more for easy-listening listeners than for his earlier audience. His impact on the rock mainstream remained unmistakable; Joe Cocker and Steve Winwood in particular absorbed a great deal from his approach, while subtler traces of his phrasing appear in the work of artists such as Van Morrison.
Any broad critique of Charles must be offered cautiously; he had become an American institution whose vocal abilities stayed largely undiminished across a career spanning half a century. Still, the recordings he made after the late 1960s proved largely disappointing. Countless listeners hoped for a return to the full-throated soul of his 1955–1965 classics, yet Charles had never confined himself solely to soul. Like Aretha Franklin and Elvis Presley, his primary interest lay in broad-based pop more than many observers assume; his affection for jazz, country, and pop standards was always evident, even if the earthier material he produced was what truly broke new ground and endures today. He continued to reach the charts from time to time, occasionally on the country side, and drew loyal concert crowds around the world whenever he chose to tour. In the 1990s he further embedded himself in the national consciousness by performing in several Diet Pepsi commercials. He also issued three albums for Warner Bros. during that decade, though he remained most in demand as a live attraction. In 2002 he released Thanks for Bringing Love Around Again on his own Crossover label, and the following year he began work on a duets album that would feature B.B. King, Willie Nelson, Michael McDonald, and James Taylor. After undergoing hip replacement surgery in 2003, he planned a tour for the next summer, yet he had to cancel an appearance in March 2004. Three months later, on June 10, 2004, Ray Charles died of liver disease at his home in Beverly Hills, California. The duets project, Genius Loves Company, appeared two months after his death. The biopic Ray reached theaters in the fall of 2004 to both critical and commercial acclaim; Jamie Foxx, who played Charles in the film, received the 2005 Academy Award for Best Actor. Two additional posthumous albums, Genius & Friends and Ray Sings, Basie Swings, followed in 2005 and 2006. Charles’s recordings have since been reissued in numerous facsimile editions, remastered versions, and box sets, reflecting the enduring attention due to a legendary American artist.
