Jon Pareles and Bernard Weinraub, New York Times
June 11, 2004

Ray Charles, the piano man with the bluesy baritone who reshaped American music for half a century, died Thursday of complications of liver disease at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 73.

He brought his influence to bear as a performer, songwriter, band leader and producer. Charles was a remarkable pianist, at home with splashy barrelhouse playing and precisely understated swing. But his playing was inevitably overshadowed by his voice, a forthright baritone steeped in the blues, strong and impure and gloriously unpredictable. He could belt like a blues shouter and croon like a pop singer, and he used the flaws and breaks in his voice to illuminate emotional paradoxes.

Leaping into falsetto, stretching a word and then breaking it off with a laugh or a sob, slipping into an intimate whisper and then letting loose a whoop, Charles could sound suave or raw, brash or hesitant, joyful or desolate, insouciant or tearful, earthy or devout. He could conjure exultation, sorrow and determination within a single phrase.

In the 1950s, he became an architect of soul music by bringing the fervor and dynamics of gospel to secular subjects, but soon broke through categories. By singing any song he prized, Charles claimed all of American music as his birthright.

Charles made more than 60 albums, and his influence echoes through generations of rock and soul singers. Joe Levy, music editor of Rolling Stone, said, "The hit records he made for Atlantic in the mid-50s mapped out everything that would happen to rock 'n' roll and soul music in the years that followed."

Levy continued, "He's called a genius because no one could confine him to one genre. He wasn't just rhythm and blues. He was jazz as well. In the early '60s, he turned himself into a country performer. Except for B.B. King, there's no other figure who's been as important or has endured so long."

Charles influenced singers as varied as Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Van Morrison and Billy Joel. But he started out being influenced by a very different singer, Nat (King) Cole.

Ray Charles Robinson was born on Sept. 23, 1930, in Albany, Ga., and grew up in Greenville, Fla. When he was 5 he began losing his sight from an unknown ailment that may have been glaucoma and was blind by the time he was 7. But he began to learn boogie-woogie piano and soaked up gospel music and rural blues.

While attending Florida's St. Augustine School for the Deaf and the Blind from 1937 to 1945, Charles learned to repair radios and car and started formal piano lessons. He learned to write music in Braille and played Chopin and Art Tatum. He also learned to play clarinet, alto saxophone, trumpet and organ. On the radio, he listened to swing bands, country-and-western singers and gospel quartets. "My ears were sponges, soaked it all up," he told David Ritz, who collaborated on his 1978 autobiography, "Brother Ray."

Asked recently what effect blindness had had on his career, Charles replied: "Nothing, nothing, nothing. I was going to do what I was going to do anyway. I played music since I was 3. I could see then. I lost my sight when I was 7. So blindness didn't have anything to do with it. It didn't give me anything. And it didn't take nothing."

He left school at 15, after the death of his mother, and went to Jacksonville to earn a living as a musician. After three years, he moved to Seattle, where he started an addiction to heroin that lasted for 17 years and made his first single, "Confession Blues," in 1949; his second, "Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand" by the Ray Charles Trio, was recorded in Los Angeles in 1950.

In 1953, he signed with Atlantic Records; he also moved to New Orleans to work with Guitar Slim as pianist and arranger. Guitar Slim's "Things That I Used to Do," featuring Charles on piano, became a million-selling single in 1954, and it persuaded Charles to leave his imitative style behind and free his own voice. He moved to Dallas and formed a band featuring the Texas saxophonist David (Fathead) Newman.

"I've Got a Woman," recorded in a radio-station studio in Atlanta with his seven-piece band, became Charles' first national hit in 1955, starting a string of bluesy, gospel-charged hits. He expanded his band to include the Raelettes, female backup singers who provided responses like a gospel choir, and they became a permanent part of his music. Charles left Atlantic for ABC-Paramount Records in 1959 and began to reach a larger pop public with songs including two No. 1 hits, his version of "Georgia on My Mind" in 1960 (which brought him his first of a dozen Grammy Awards) and "Hit the Road Jack" in 1961.

In 1965, Charles was arrested for possession of heroin. He spent time in a California sanatorium to break his addiction and stopped performing for a year, the only break during his long career. He started his own label, Tangerine, which released albums through ABC and on its own. In the mid-1970s, he started another label, Crossover, which released albums through Atlantic Records.

His autobiography became a best-seller in 1978. In 1986, Charles was one of the first musicians inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1990, he turned up in television ads for Diet Pepsi, singing, "You got the right one, baby, uh-huh!" Charles made several high-visibility stops in the Twin Cities in the 1990s, including singing "America the Beautiful" at the party celebrating the Mall of America's opening in August 1992 for a $50,000 fee.

He also performed with the Minnesota Orchestra, most recently in 1999. In 1997, he brought his 40-piece orchestra for an outdoor performance at the now-defunct Mill City Music Festival. Charles' daughter Sheila Ray also lived in the Twin Cities for a time, and worked on a demo tape at Prince's Paisley Park studios.

Among Charles' numerous awards were the Presidential Medal for the Arts, in 1993, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 1986. In an interview this year, Charles reflected on his career and expressed eagerness to be in front of an audience again.

"Yes, I'm going to keep touring, keep performing, it's in my blood," he said in a recording studio in Los Angeles. "I'm like Count Basie or Duke Ellington. Until the good Lord calls my number, that's what I'm going to do."

Later,
Cosmic