Rick Patrick
rick@greenepublishing.com
On Thursday, Sept. 23, a group of musicians gathered at the Ray Charles Memorial in Greenville to pay tribute to the legendary musical performer. There is probably no better way to honor a musician such as Charles than to perform his music, and that is what the “Hot Tamale” group from Tallahassee did. The small contemporary music group performed some of Charles' better known hits, as well as a couple of their own original pieces, for a small audience of grateful listeners.
Charles, who grew up in Greenville, was a well-known singer and pianist who crossed musical boundaries with such hits as “I Can't Stop Loving You,” “Hit the Road, Jack,” “Georgia on my Mind” and many more. Charles' music ranged from jazz to rhythm and blues to country over a musical career that spanned close to a half century.
Charles was born Ray Charles Robinson in Albany, Ga. on Sept. 23, 1930. He was raised in Greenville, where he started playing piano in a local cafe as a young child. At around age six, he contracted glaucoma, which would leave him permanently blind. He began studying music at the St. Augustine School for the Deaf and the Blind from 1937 to 1945. After his mother died when Charles was around 15, he left school and began playing in various dance bands around Florida. It has been said that he dropped his last name in order to avoid confusion with Sugar Ray Robinson, a famous boxer at the time. Charles would become one of the leaders in the changing musical landscape of the early 1950s by combining several musical styles such as blues, gospel, jazz, country and the newly evolving rock and roll.
A life-sized bronze statue of Charles was sculpted and sits in Greenville's Haffye Hays Park as a tribute to Greenville's famous former resident. “I was born with music inside me,” Charles once said. “That's the only explanation I know.”
Charles died at the age of 73 at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif., on June 10, 2004, of complications from liver failure.