The Originals - Ray Charles

"Music to me is just like breathing," Ray Charles once said. "I have to have it. It's part of me." As a result of that outlook, his music became a huge part of the air all music lovers breathe as well. His influence is incalculable, his body of work impressive and immense, touching everything from soul, to rock, to country, to rhythm and blues. That is why he is truly an Original.

Ray Charles Robinson was born on September 23, 1930 in Albany, Georgia, and was soon on the path to what would define him as an icon, learning basic piano lessons by the side of a man named Wylie Pitman, a local man who could've just shooed the young man away, told him he was busy practicing. It's good for the world that he didn't.

Life was hard for the Robinson family, living on a shoestring or less, and it was only going to get harder. Ray lost his younger brother George in an accident at the age of four, Ray, five. Soon after that, thanks to an undiagnosed case of glaucoma, he began losing his sight, and became fully blind at the age of seven. Accepted as a charity case at the St. Augustine School for the Blind, Ray began to learn more about and develop his gift for music.

After leaving school, Ray began to go around the state of Florida, picking up gigs here and there to keep a little money in his pocket, but tired of this, deciding he wanted to get out of Florida to find his own way. Not sure if he could handle New York or Chicago just yet, he saved up $500 and took a five-day-long bus trip from Florida to Seattle, Washington, in 1948, which turned out to be a terrific move.

There, he met a young man named Quincy Jones, who played in a band that Ray had worked with. The two began a friendship that would last the rest of Ray's life, and he was the one who taught Jones how to write music, launching yet another legendary career alongside Ray's. Soon, Ray caught the attention of Jack Lauderdale of Swingtime Records, who signed him to his first record deal in 1950, then did him an even bigger favor by selling his contract to Atlantic Records for the now-laughable sum of $2,500, in 1952.

It was with Atlantic that Ray Charles really took off, giving him a bigger audience for his unique mix of church music and the rhythms of the nightclub that alternately enraged and enthralled the listening public. In 1955, he released "I Got A Woman," and the sky was the limit from there.

After seven years of great success with Atlantic, he moved on to ABC/Paramount Records, and recorded what would become not only his signature song, but quite possibly one of the most recognizable songs in the history of music, "Georgia On My Mind," in 1959. It reached number one on the singles charts in 1960, and lead to even more commercial successes, including the phenomenal "Modern Sounds In Country and Western Music" in 1962. The album, also almost universally proclaimed as a masterpiece, hit number one on the Billboard charts and stayed there for 12 weeks, and spawned three more Charles classics ("I Can't Stop Loving You," "Born to Lose," and "You Don't Know Me").

Wanting greater control over his career and music, Ray established RPM (Recording, Production, and Management) at 2107 West Washington Boulevard, a working-class section of Los Angeles, and from 1964 on, nearly without exception, all his music was recorded there. Not only did Mr. Charles record here, but a list of the top talents in music did as well, including Willie Nelson, B.B. King, Gladys Knight, George Jones, Lou Rawls, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and, of course, Quincy Jones.

Just by listing his career awards, you could make the case that Ray Charles was one of the greatest ever: He won 12 Grammy awards, and that's not including his Lifetime Achievement and President's Merit Awards. He was an original inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, was awarded the Presidential Medal for the Arts, received France's Legion of Honor, was the second youngest recipient of the Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Award in 1986, and has performed at the request of seven United States Presidents.

And now, there's a permanent museum at RPM Studios, which itself is a Historic Landmark of the City of Los Angeles, and ranks alongside Hitsville USA in Detroit and Sun Studios in Memphis as major monuments of popular entertainment. In 2006, all 12 Grammys were brought back together for the first time in over 30 years for the museum.

"Brother Ray" left us on June 10, 2004, and it was the only way the music would ever stop coming from "The Genius." But his memory and his voice will never be silenced as long as music exists. He is an original, and never to be duplicated.