Ray Charles

Ray Charles Robinson — Ray Charles — invented soul music by fusing the sacred sounds of the Black church with the secular rhythms of blues and jazz, a combination so audacious that some called it blasphemous and others recognized it as genius. His 1954 hit "I Got a Woman" took a gospel melody and put secular lyrics to it, creating a template that would define popular music for the next seventy years.

Born in Albany, Georgia, in 1930, Charles began losing his sight at age five — likely from untreated glaucoma — and was completely blind by seven. He attended the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind, where he learned piano, composition, and arranging. Orphaned at fifteen, he struck out on his own, traveling the chitlin' circuit and developing the style that would change everything.

Charles's genius was his refusal to be confined by genre. He moved from R&B to country ("I Can't Stop Loving You" hit number one on the pop charts), from jazz standards to pop ballads, from gospel-infused soul to orchestral arrangements. He recorded "Georgia on My Mind" in 1960, and it became the state song of Georgia in 1979 — the same state that had once enforced the segregation he grew up under. Frank Sinatra called him "the only true genius in the business."