From classic songs to his own award-winning Hollywood biopic,
Ray Charles accomplished quite a lot during his lifetime despite losing his eyesight very early
in his childhood. Unfortunately, blindness wasn't the only hardship Charles faced. This
is the tragic real-life story of Ray Charles. Ray Charles Robinson was born on September 23,
1930, to Bailey Robinson and Aretha Williams. According to History Links, Charles' father
only appeared a few times throughout Ray's early life and eventually left the family all together,
leaving Aretha to care for Ray and his younger brother, George.
Ray talks about his early childhood, despite an absent father, as fulfilling and joyful. However,
he suffered a life-altering loss at age five. One day, he and his brother were playing in the
backyard when four-year-old George slipped and fell into a large metal tub used by his mother
to clean their clothes. Ray couldn't pull George, weighed down by the soapy clothes, out. He ran
inside to find his mother, who pulled out her son, but sadly, George Robinson was already gone.
The loss of his brother marked the first of many tragedies in Ray's childhood. Around the same
time young Ray witnessed George's drowning, his eyesight began to worsen. By the age of seven,
he was completely blind. His blindness, according to the Industries for the Blind and Visually
Impaired, is believed to have been the result of glaucoma. Seeing that the Robinson family
grew up poor in the segregated South, the best medical treatment was not available for Ray.
According to Live About, Aretha Williams would never let her son use his blindness as an excuse.
Charles recalls his mother telling him,
"Remember you goin' blind but you ain't stupid"
Ray said he didn't pick up the guitar like other blind African American
musicians because of its association with blindness and helplessness.
Young Ray heeded his mother's words and did not want his blindness to be an excuse to be pitied.
Aretha Williams was only a 15-year-old teenager when she had Ray.
Charles's father Bailey was not only much older and married, but according to the book,
Young Musicians in World History, he had taken Aretha in when she was an orphan. So
not only did the man abandon the woman he got pregnant, but it was his own foster daughter.
After George's death and Ray's blindness,
Aretha Williams made sure her son was given the best opportunity for success
despite her own poor health and the family's near destitute financial situation.
She looked for a way to help her son and found it with the Florida School for the
Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine. With the help of family friends and persistence,
she got her son into the school in 1937. Aretha Williams died in 1945 when Ray was a teenager.
There's struggling as a young musician, and then there's Ray Charles' struggling.
Blind, poor, tormented by his brother's and mother's death,
and living in the Jim Crow South, 'The Genius' had enough emotional baggage for an airplane.
During his eight years at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind,
Charles studied music. He learned to read, write, and compose music in braille and
learned to play the saxophone, trumpet, clarinet, and keyboards at the school.
The classical music training Charles received fit well with his experience before the school.
Ray first learned to play upright piano as a child from a local store owner named Wylie Pitman.
"And He was the guy that, you know, started me and showing me little things at a time you know?"
Charles left the school to work as a professional musician following his mother's passing. He
traveled to Jacksonville and spent the next three years as a road musician around Florida.
At points during this time, according to the biography Ray Charles: Singer and Musician,
Charles lived in poverty and would sometimes go days without food. It was
also during this period in Charles' life that he was first introduced to heroin.
According to his website, the teenage musician raised enough money to travel to Seattle to work
as a crooner in the same vein as Nat King Cole. In order to avoid confusion with the
popular boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, Ray Charles dropped his last name Robinson professionally.
"Here straight off the bus from Florida, I give you Ray 'Don't Call Me Sugar' Robinson!"
For 22 years, Della Beatrice Howard, also known as "Bea," was married to Ray Charles,
and the couple had three sons. During those two decades plus, however, Charles had five children
with five different women outside of the three he had with his wife.
Earn the Necklace says that Charles met Bea when she became one of his backup singers,
and they married a year later in 1955. Ray, at this point in his life and career,
had already been briefly married to a woman named Eileen Williams and had already fathered a child
with another woman. Ray and Bea had their first child together, Ray Charles Robinson Jr., in 1955.
Professionally, Charles had begun to take over the R&B charts with songs such as
"I Got a Woman" and "A Fool for You." Rare reports that
the success led to more tours of black venues known as 'the chitlin' circuit',
away from Bea. When his first son was born, in fact, Charles was performing in Texas.
Charles' drug addiction, affairs, and career became too much for Bea, and the pair divorced
in 1977. Charles would never remarry. In the late 1950s, Charles decided to add
the Cookies, a New York group, as his backup vocalists though some members eventually
joined Ray full time and became known as the Raelettes. The group included Margie Hendrix,
and like with Bea, Charles had begun to fall for the backup singer. They eventually had a
son together, and he can be heard singing on the hit song, "Night Time is The Right Time."
Charles and Hendrix's affair began in the late 1950s and continued until she left the Raelettes
following a fight with Charles in 1964. Sir Shambling says that while Ray's vice was drugs,
Margie's vice was alcohol, which led to a volatile relationship between the pair.
After the Raelettes, Margie moved to Los Angeles to pursue a solo career.
Margie died in July 1973 of what is believed to have been a drug overdose.
Regina King said this when trying to research her role of Margie for the 2004 Ray Charles biopic:
"There's very little written about Margie Hendrix,
which is pretty amazing because she had one of the most unique voices ever in American music."
"What'd I Say" made it to number 10 on Rolling Stone's list of 500 greatest songs of all time.
The iconic opening electric piano rift and Charles' passionate vocals broke the R&B star
to mainstream pop success. According to Chimes Freedom, Charles said that the song was created
at the end of a concert as he was trying to finish the final minutes of his contracted
time for a performance. Ray called Atlantic following a few performances of the song, saying,
"I'm playing a song out here on the road, and I don't know what it is [...] but the people
are just going wild every time we play it, and I think we ought to record it."
According to an essay penned by Michael Lyndon, upon its release,
the song was met with a great amount of controversy and was even banned
from certain stations for its risqué innuendos. Even Black-owned stations
did not like the fact that the song mixed secular lyrics with gospel-inspired music.
"Hold on, hey, you got a problem?"
"Yeah I got a problem! That's gospel you singing!
You're turning God's music into sex - you're making money off the Lord!"
Still, "What'd I Say" was a hit among young people
and propelled Charles from the R&B charts to the Top 10 on Billboard.
Ray Charles had officially crossed over to become a pop star,
and just in time, as his Atlantic contract was soon to expire. Within six months,
The Washington Post reports, Charles had signed a more lucrative contract with ABC.
Drug addiction is a classic musician stereotype. Ray Charles, despite being unique in many ways
during his career, wasn't unique in any way in this regard. The only exception might be
how young he was when he first began to use drugs. Jet magazine reported back in 1961 that following
an arrest after police found a jar of marijuana, a hypodermic syringe, and a gelatin capsule that
had heroin residue, Charles admitted to having been a drug user since he was 16 years old.
According to Recovery Ranch, promoters for the venues he played gave Charles marijuana to help
his performance anxiety. Soon, his marijuana use turned into heroin use, and the musician
spent the next decade and a half addicted to the drug. Charles later faced another drug arrest,
but according to Super Lawyers, he avoided jail time by entering rehab.
Black Doctor reports that Charles' drug use was to stop the nightmares he'd experienced since
witnessing his brother's drowning. In 1966, after being released from rehab and swearing off drugs,
Charles put his new life into his music, recording songs about his experiences such as "Let's Go Get
Stoned" and "I Don't Need No Doctor." His 1966 album, Crying Time, was made with his experiences
fighting through drug addiction in mind. After leaving rehab, for the first time since
his early teens, Ray Charles was no longer a drug addict. While this would be celebrated
in most regards, another equally damaging vice took hold of Charles in the form of alcohol.
While he ended his use of hard drugs following his stint in rehab in the mid-1960s,
Charles continued to drink gin and smoke marijuana until his death.
Slate reports that when Charles was working on his autobiography, he said,
"Just like smack never got in the way of my working,
same goes for booze and reefer. What I do with my own body is my own business."
Toward the end of his life however, his years of alcohol use finally caught up with him. In 2003,
he was diagnosed with alcoholic liver disease and hepatitis C.
The 73-year-old musician changed his mindset, saying -
"If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself."
A half-century of performing and touring, addiction to drugs and alcohol,
and years of womanizing finally took its toll on Ray Charles at the turn of the century.
In 2003, at the age of 73, Charles was forced to cancel a tour to recover from hip surgery.
According to KUSA, it was his first canceled tour in 53 years.
Charles' spokesman said that the musician was looking to tour the following spring.
Unfortunately, while the operation was successful, Biography reports that Charles learned he was
suffering from liver disease and that his days were numbered. During the same period,
Charles was working on what would be his final two projects: a final album and a biopic about
his life. On June 10, 2004, Ray Charles passed away in his Beverly Hills home at the age of 73.
Genius Loves Company, Ray Charles' final album, was released two months after his passing.
The album featured duets with some of the biggest names in music, including George Michael,
B.B. King, Alicia Keys, and Willie Nelson, just to name a few. According to MTV, Genius Loves Company
was Charles' best-selling album of his career and was awarded a Grammy the following year.
When his biopic was released in the autumn of 2004, it was both a critical and commercial
success, and Jamie Foxx won a BAFTA Award, Golden Globe, and Academy Award for his
portrayal of the famous late musician. As reported by Today, many artists paid
tribute to Ray Charles following his passing. Aretha Franklin called him -
"The voice of a lifetime."
Bruce Hornsby recalled that despite Charles having to be helped to the
piano in some of his final performances, he was still a powerful performer -
"When he started singing, that was it. Everyone else was playing for second."
Following the posthumous success of his final album and his biopic,
Charles seemed to have walked off the world stage to a standing ovation.
Unfortunately, nobody told that to his dozen children.
Celebrity Net Worth reports that Charles was worth $75 million at the time of his death.
According to CNN, Charles had met with his children shortly before his passing
and told them they would each receive $500,000 in exchange for waiving claims to his estate.
In 2012, Charles' estate sued seven of his children, alleging that they were
violating the agreement by sending copyright termination notices to music publishers.
According to Fabiosa, in 2015, the estate won a lawsuit that
prevented Ray's children from seeking any further interest in their father's estate.
"We need pianos, amps, mics - the works."
"Now go on, get!"
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