Overview
Ray Charles
Known For
Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music
Untold stories behind the culture-defining and newsmaking musical performances, sketches...
They All Came Out to Montreux
Utilizing a wealth of archival footage featuring Prince, Aretha Franklin,...
Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love
Paying tribute to a beloved national icon for her birthday,...
2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony
The 37th Annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction...
Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues
An intimate and revealing look at the world-changing musician, presented...
Like A Rolling Stone: The Life & Times of Ben Fong-Torres
Suzanne Joe Kai’s intimate documentary shows us how the Rolling...
Biography
Ray Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004), better known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records. He also helped racially integrate country and pop music during the 1960s with his crossover success on ABC Records, most notably with his Modern Sounds albums. While with ABC, Charles became one of the first African-American musicians to be given artistic control by a mainstream record company. Frank Sinatra called Charles “the only true genius in show business.” Rolling Stone ranked Charles number 10 on their list of "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" in 2004, and number two on their November 2008 list of "100 Greatest Singers of All Time". In honoring Charles, Billy Joel noted: "This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley. I don't know if Ray was the architect of rock & roll, but he was certainly the first guy to do a lot of things . . . Who the hell ever put so many styles together and made it work?" Description above from the Wikipedia article Ray Charles, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia