Singer, Entertainer. He is recognized as an award-winning 20th-century American singer with a 50-year career who dabbled in country, jazz, big band, and the blues. He was born in Albany, Georgia, but he and his teenage mother relocated to his mother's hometown, Greenville, Florida, near the Georgia-Florida state line when he was an infant. His father abandoned him. He had a younger brother who accidently drowned at age four. Living in destitution, he was blind by age seven, by possibly Glaucoma, and by age 15 he was an orphan. From 1937 to 1945, he attended the Florida Deaf and Blind School in St. Augustine and learned to read and write music in Braille. Eventually, he was writing score for big bands, and playing instruments, including trumpet, clarinet, organ, alto sax, and the piano. After his mother's funeral, he did not return to school to graduate, but joined musical groups playing in the LaVilla section of Jacksonville and later a group in Orlando and Tampa. These were difficult years for him with little money for food and shelter, yet did recordings before relocating to Seattle, Washington in March of 1948. In April of 1949, he and his band recorded "Confession Blues," which reached #2 on the Billboard R&B charts. In 1950 he relocated to Los Angeles and toured with various groups. By 1951 he was using the name "Ray Charles" with his recordings. As his recordings were popular, he signed a contract with Atlantic Records in 1952, staying with them until 1959. During this time, he had appeared at the Apollo Theater and Carnegie Hall and covered country singer Hank William's song "I'm Movin' On". In 1954, "I Got A Woman" reached #2 on the Billboard R&B charts. After signing with ABC-Paramount late in 1959, his career became more mainstream. Although he did not write the 1930 song "Georgia on My Mind," he brought the song to public recognition in the 1960 album "The Genius Hits the Road; his #1-Billboard-hit version became the State of Georgia's official song in 1979. He received two Grammy Awards for the song and ten more total between 1960 and 1966. He received the best R&B recording three consecutive years with "Hit the Road Jack" in 1960 "I Can't Stop Loving You" in 1962 and "Busted" 1963. His versions of other songs are also well known, including "Makin' Whoopee" and a stirring "America the Beautiful." Battling the segregated South, he was scheduled to play in Augusta, Georgia in 1961 in a theatre that was strictly reserved for a white-only audience; he took a stance and refused to play, as did other Black performers. He received 17 Grammy Awards with his last Grammy in 1993 for "A Song for You." Besides his Grammy Awards, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award, President's Merit Award, Kennedy Center Honors, National Medal of the Arts, the Polar Music Award from Sweden, eight honorary doctorate degrees, and his Playboy Awards. In 1986 with a $1 million person endowment, he formed The Robinson Foundation for Hearing Disorders, Inc., which was later The Ray Charles Foundation. A postage stamp was issued in his honor. He married twice and had twelve children.

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