Speaking Volumes | Celebrating 90 years of Ray Charles

Musical genius Ray Charles would have turned 90 on Sept. 23. Born in 1930, the American music legend changed music as we know it. Known as a singer-songwriter, pianist and composer, he left his mark on blues, jazz, R&B, and gospel, blending them into country and pop genre music in the 1960s.

Charles was the winner of 17 Grammy Awards, and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987. He also shared duets with other musical icons like Johnny Cash, George Jones, and Elton John. Perhaps overcoming personal struggles in his lifetime, like blindness and addiction, were what made him so admirable, as featured in the feature film “Ray” starring Jamie Foxx from 2004. Charles was born in Albany, Ga., before moving to Jacksonville and eventually Tampa Bay.

He developed an early interest in music, starting to play piano at age 3. When he went blind at age 7 due to glaucoma, he attended the Florida School of the Blind and Deaf. He lost both his younger brother and his mother during his childhood, after which he didn’t return to school. He began to perform across the state and later, his career took him cross country to Seattle and Los Angeles, where he passed away in 2004 from liver failure.

Ray Charles blessed the world with hits like “Georgia on My Mind,” “Hit the Road Jack,” “I Got A Woman” and “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” His rendition of “America the Beautiful,” though widely criticized when it was released in 1972, became a classic. President Obama remarked in 2016, Charles’ version of the song “will always be in my view the most patriotic piece of music ever performed.”

To hear some of Ray Charles’ works, check out music CDs from Manatee Libraries, such as “Standards,” “Genius Loves Company,” “The Genius of Ray Charles,” “Anthology,” “Super Hits” and his version of “America the Beautiful.” CDs are also available featuring some of his collaborations with other artists like Willie Nelson and Friends’ on “Live and Kickin’,” “Absolute Benson” by George Benson, “Playin’ with My Friends: Tony Bennett Sings the Blues” by Tony Bennett and “Duets” by Barbra Streisand. Some of these titles are also available on Hoopla as digital downloads, plus an even more extensive selection of streaming music from his musical catalogue, like his works “What’d I Say” and “The Birth of Soul.”

Dive deeper into Charles’ life through the book “Ray Charles: Man and Music” by Michael Lydon and the children’s biography “Ray Charles: ‘I Was Born With Music Inside Me’” by Carin T. Ford. You can go behind the scenes of the movie “Ray” (also available through Manatee Libraries) in the book “Ray: A Tribute to the Movie, the Music, and the Man” by James White and catch the musical great live in all his glory on DVD in “Ray Charles Live: In Concert with the Edmonton Symphony.”

Your library is online: www.mymanatee.org/library. Free masks are available at all locations.

Speaking Volumes is written by members of the staff at the Manatee County Public Library System. Aaron Drake works at the Palmetto Public Library.