The Greatest Ray Charles

Title: Ray Charles - The Greatest Ray Charles
Year/Genre/Sub-Genre/City: 1961, Soul Albany, Georgia 10/26
Matrix #: N/A
Condition: VG+ (LM) | Members: Ray C (30' - 04')
Cultural Facts:

1. Blind by Seven: Ray Charles began losing his sight as a young child and was completely blind by age seven. His mother sent him to the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, where he learned to read and write music in Braille and studied piano, organ, clarinet and saxophone.
2. Teenage Friends With Quincy Jones: After his mother's death, a teenage Charles moved to Seattle, where he met an even younger Quincy Jones. The two became lifelong friends while still struggling musicians, decades before either became an American music institution.
3. Gospel Turned Into Soul: “I Got a Woman” grew partly from the Southern Tones gospel song “It Must Be Jesus.” Charles took the church's call-and-response intensity and put secular lyrics over it, a controversial move that helped create the musical language that became known as soul.

10-4-26 AC