Ray Charles Robinson Research Paper

Ray Charles Robinson was born on September 23, 1930, in Albany, Georgia. Ray witnessed his brother drown at a very early age, and this affected him throughout the course of his life. After the death of his brother Ray began to gradually lose his sight, he completely lost his sight by the age of seven. After he lost his sight his mother then sent him to Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine, Florida. There he learned to read, write, arrange music in Braille, play the piano, organ, sax, clarinet, and even the trumpet. Ray was interested in different kinds of music, they mainly ranged from country to gospel, to blues.

Ray lived his life based off of something his mother said to him, “Always remember your promise to me. Never let nobody or nothing turn you into no cripple”, and “You may be going blind, but you ain’t stupid”. (Ray, The Movie) No matter where Ray went or what he was doing he always thought of this, and it helped him stand up for himself when he wasn’t being treated equally. The evolution of Ray’s music began shortly after the death of his mother. Ray’s mother died when he was fifteen years old. After Ray’s mother passed away he was …show more content…
Although this song did well on the R&B charts, his later songs “Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand”, and “Kissa Me Baby” had more success. In 1953 Ray made a deal with Atlantic Records. Even though Ray’s career was taking off, he still struggled quite often with people cheating him out of money. Due to being blind, people would count the money out loud, but Ray could not see that they were taking more money from him then they were saying. This caused a lot of problems for Ray on the road, and often lead to him getting in fights and leaving, and trying to find somewhere else to place his success. After Ray landed the deal with Atlantic Records, his song “Mess Around” spiked on the charts, because he started to pull away from the Nat King Cole