When
I was a kid three years old, I was already
trying -- whenever I heard a note -- I was
already trying to involve myself with it.
There was this wonderful man named Wylie
Pitman who was one of the first people to
encourage me. As a youngster I would jump
in the chair next to him and start banging
on the piano keys while he was trying to
practice. And he would say, "Oh no,
son, you don't play like that; you don't
hit the keys with all your fingers at one
time. I'm going to show you how to play a
little melody with one finger." He
could have easily said, "Hey kid,
don't you see I'm practicing? Get away,
don't bother me." But instead he took
the time to say, "No, you don't do it
that way." When Mr. Pitman started
playing, whatever I was doing I'd stop to
go in and sit on that little stool chair
he had there.
Things started changing fast shortly after
that. I guess the first major tragedy in
my life was seeing my younger brother
drown when I was about five years old. He
was about a year younger, and a very smart
kid. I remember that well; he was very
bright. He could add and subtract numbers
when he was three-and-a-half years old.
The older people in the neighborhood, they
used to say about him, "That boy is
too smart. He's probably not going to be
very long on this earth." You know
old folks, the superstitions they have.
Anyway, we were out in the backyard one
day while my mom was in the house ironing
some clothes. We were playing by a huge
metal washtub full of water. And we were
having fun the way boys do, pushing and
jostling each other around. Now, I never
did know just how it happened, but my
brother somehow tilted over the rim of
this tub and fell down, slid down into the
water and slipped under. At first I
thought he was still playing, but it
finally dawned on me that he wasn't
moving, he wasn't reacting. I tried to
pull him out of the water, but by that
time his clothes had gotten soaked through
with water and he was just too heavy for
me. So I ran in and got my mom, and she
raced out back and snatched him out of the
tub. She shook him, and breathed into his
mouth, and pumped his little stomach, but
it was too late.
It was quite a trauma for me, and after
that I started to lose my sight. I
remember one of the things they tried to
save my sight for as long as they could
was to have my mama keep me away from too
much light. It took me about two years to
completely lose all sight, but by the time
I was seven, I was completely blind.
That's when I went to St. Augustine's
school for the blind.
Strangely enough, losing my sight wasn't
quite as bad as you'd think, because my
mom conditioned me for the day that I
would be totally blind. When the doctors
told her that I was gradually losing my
sight, and that I wasn't going to get any
better, she started helping me deal with
it by showing me how to get around, how to
find things. That made it a little bit
easier to deal with. My mother was awful
smart, even though she'd only gotten to
fourth grade. She had knowledge all her
own; knowledge of human nature, plus
plenty of common sense.
As long as I can remember, music has
always been something extraordinary in my
life. It's always been something that
completely captured my attention -- from
the time I was three, when Mr. Pitman was
showing me these little melodies. My first
love was the music I heard in the
community: blues, church gospel music, and
country and western. That's why I love
country and western today, because I heard
a lot of it when I was a kid. My mom would
let me stay up to listen to the Grand Old
Opry on Saturday night. That's the only
time I got to stay up late. I heard the
blues played by Muddy Waters and Blind Boy
Phillips and Tampa Red and Big Boy Crudup.
And of course every night if you listened
to the right station, you might pick up a
little Duke Ellington or Count Basie. But
the bulk of what I heard of blues in those
days was called "race music,"
which became rhythm and blues, and rhythm
and blues later was called soul music.
When I got to school I couldn't get into
the piano class because it was full.
That's when I took up the clarinet. I was
a great fan of Artie Shaw, so I started
playing a reed instrument. Later I was
able to get into the piano class. Music
teachers in those days were a lot
different from teachers today; it was a
different thing all together. When I came
up, you didn't have jazz appreciation like
you have today; you studied classical
music. With blind kids, as opposed to
sighted kids, when you study music you
must read the music with your fingers. I'd
read three or four bars of music with my
fingers, and then play it. You can't just
sit there and play as you're reading the
music. You have to first learn the bars of
music, practice it, and then play it and
memorize it.
The name of the game was to know your
lesson when it was due and I studied like
everybody else. Even in my other classes,
I always felt that it was important to
know what you were supposed to do and have
your lessons down, or at least have a
working relationship with the music. I was
just an ordinary student; I was not
exceptional like some students. The only
problem I had with my teachers was that
when I was supposedly practicing my
lesson, a lot of times I'd be playing
jazz. Of course, the teacher would catch
me, and that didn't go over too well.
She'd say, "What the hell are you
doing boy; what's the matter with you; you
lost your mind? Get to your lessons."
Classical music to me was a means to an
end. In other words, I wanted to learn how
to arrange and I wanted to know how to
write music, and in order to do that I had
to study classical music. But I wanted to
play jazz, and I wanted to play blues --
that was my heart.
As a student, I was always playing music
that somebody else wrote, and I got the
idea in my mind that I would like to write
music myself. The first time I wrote an
arrangement and heard it played back to
me, you can't imagine how excited I was. I
mean, to write something and then have
musicians play it back to you, and you
hear it and you hear your ideas, your
thoughts -- that was the most exciting
thing to me. I was 12 years old when I
first had that feeling and I've never
forgotten that. It was at the St.
Augustine's. We had a small orchestra, you
understand. Keep in mind, this was a small
school for the deaf and the blind, so you
had maybe nine or 12 people in the band,
something like that.
I wasn't quite 15 when my mama died. That
was the most devastating thing in my whole
experience -- bar nothing, period. It
happened while I was away at school, and
they didn't want to tell me about it. They
just called me in to the principal's
office and said that I needed to go home
right away. When I got there I found out
from Miss Mary Jane, a lady that helped my
mom raise me and take care of me; she gave
me the news. From that moment on, I was
completely in another world. I couldn't
eat, I couldn't sleep -- I was totally out
of it. There's no way to describe how I
actually felt. I was truly a lost child.
The big problem was I couldn't cry; I
couldn't get the sorrow out of my system,
and that made things worse. Now, there was
an old lady in town we called Ma Beck. She
was the kind of lady that --well,
everybody in town used to say that if
there was a heaven, she was certainly
going to be there when she passed. Anyway,
this elderly woman saw the trauma I was
going through. So she took me aside one
day and said, "Son, you know that I
knew your mama. And I know how she tried
to raise you. And I know she always taught
you to carry on. I also know she told you
she wanted you to know how to get around
and be independent. Because she knew she
wasn't always gonna be with you. Didn't
she tell you that?"
I said, "Yes ma'am'" and started
to tear up. And Ma Beck kept after me.
"Well, then, you also know that your
mamma didn't want you going around just
doing nothing and feeling sorry for
yourself, 'cause that's not the way she
brought you up. Isn't that right?" I
said, "Yes, ma'am," and more
tears came out. Now this elderly lady, she
knew everything about me, including my
sorrow over my brother's death. She made
me realize that it wasn't my fault, and
told me that I couldn't go through life
blaming myself.
That episode with Ma Beck shook me out of
my depression. It really started me on my
way. After that I told myself that I must
do what my mom would have expected me to
do. And so the two greatest tragedies in
my life -- losing my brother and then my
mom -- were, strangely enough,
extraordinarily positive for me. What I've
accomplished since then, really, grows out
of my coming to terms with those events.
My mama had a friend that lived in
Jacksonville, Florida, and after she died
I went there to see this lady, whose name
was Lena May Thompson, and her husband.
They weren't any kin to me; they were just
friends of my mama and when she passed
they just took me in like I was their own
child. They were wonderful people. I
stayed in Jacksonville for a year or so
working in little bands for musicians like
Henry Washington. Whenever he would get a
job, and if he could use me, I would work
for four dollars a night. Later I went to
Orlando, and it was the same thing. I
would get jobs with a fellow named Joe
Anderson, who had a band there. I stayed
about a year before going to Tampa to work
with a couple of bands there. I played for
two fellows, Charley Brantley and Manzi
Harris, and I even worked with a hillbilly
band called The Florida Playboys. I
learned how to yodel when I was with them.
During those years I was totally in love
with Nat King Cole's music. I ate, slept,
and drank everything Nat King Cole. I
wanted to be like him because he played
the piano and sang and put all those tasty
little things behind his singing. That's
what I wanted to do, so he became my idol.
I practiced day and night to sound like
Nat Cole, and I got pretty proficient at
it, too. One morning I woke up and, still
laying in bed, something said to me,
"Where is Ray Charles? Who knows your
name? Nobody ever calls you, they just
say, 'Hey, kid, you sound like Nat Cole,'
but they don't even know your name."
I knew right then I was going to have to
stop singing like Nat, but I was scared to
because I could get jobs sounding like
him. I finally told myself, "Ray, you
have got to take a chance and sound like
yourself -- period."
Work was very sparse. I might work a
couple of nights and then no more for two
weeks or three weeks -- whenever something
came along. Hit and miss, really, that's
what it was. I was very lucky in the sense
that when I was going through those hard
times, I was fortunate to run into some
people like the Thompsons. Even in Tampa,
I ran into two sisters name the Spencers.
One of them, the oldest, was a music
teacher and she just took a liking to me.
I don't know; I guess she saw that I was
out there struggling and blind. They took
me into their home, fed and sheltered me,
and gave me a few dollars to spend.
Although I wasn't making any money, I
didn't completely starve to death. I had a
lot of days when I ate sardines and dried
beans and bread to survive.
I was playing dance halls in different
little cities like De Land, Florida, or
St. Petersburg. It wasn't concerts in
those days. These were dances you worked
from 9:00 at night until 1:00 in the
morning; four hours at least. You've got
to realize, now, there was no such thing
as nightclubs -- like Cheerios and the
Blue Note. These were small places with
one door, that means one way in and one
way out. They might have had two or three
windows. In one corner they might have
been frying fish and selling beer and soda
and stuff like that. The people were out
there on the dance floor dancing, and the
band was stuck back in the corner
somewhere. We were usually in the back, so
if any trouble broke out, we would make
sure there was a window to climb out.
These places were not nightclubs like you
think of them where people come in and sit
down, and they've got on their furs and
have a drink. You came in, you came to
dance and to drink your liquor, you ate
your fish or chicken or whatever they were
selling in there and that was it.
I was not the star, mind you; in those
days, I was always with somebody else's
band. If I was working in Charlie
Brantley's band, he was the star. As a
matter of fact, in Charlie Brantley's band
I wasn't even the vocalist. Of course,
they let me sing one or two songs before
the show was over, but Charlie had his own
singer, Clarence Jolly. Otherwise, I was
just his piano player, and I was happy to
do that because I needed the money. If he
needed me to sing, I'd sing; if he wanted
me to play the piano, that's what I did;
if he wanted me to write an arrangement,
I'd write an arrangement. Whatever it took
to make a dollar. And, of course, I wrote
some music during this period as well. For
example, Joe Ellison's band played some of
my music when I was with them.
Eventually, I got tired of Florida. I was
working with these different bands and I
had worked with The Florida Playboys, when
I got the feeling one day -- just an
impulse -- and I said to myself, I'm going
to leave here because I'm not going
anywhere, I'm not doing anything. I was
too scared to go to a big city like New
York or Chicago, but I wanted to go to a
city that was a nice size and where I
thought I wouldn't get swallowed up. So I
said to a friend, Gosady McGee, "I
want to go to a city. . .what would be the
furthest city I could get to from Florida
that's still a city." And that's how
I wound up in Seattle. I saved what little
money I could -- about $500 -- and finally
took a bus from Tampa, Florida, to
Seattle, Washington. The trip took me 5
days.
I wanted to form my own group; that was my
whole thing back then. See, after my mama
passed, I always worked with somebody, or
rather for somebody. I'm not saying that
was a bad thing, but I kept thinking that
I just wasn't going anywhere. I was just
getting a job here, getting a job there,
and I got paid. Sometimes, I wouldn't even
get paid. I wanted to have something of my
own. I thought I wanted to have my own
little trio.
When I first got to Seattle, I went down
to where they were having a talent show. I
was really too young, but I begged this
guy to let me perform. He felt sorry for
me and let me in. On this talent night, I
sang my little song, which was heard by
representatives of a place called the
Elk's Club. See, on talent night you would
have various club owners or club
representatives come and see what the
talent was. Anyway, the Elk's Club hired
me for the weekend and they asked if I
could get a trio together. Hell, I didn't
know what I was talking about. I didn't
even know anybody. I just felt that I
could find somebody to play well.
As it turned out, I got my friend Gosady
McGee and I found Milt Jarret, and we
started practicing and I went to work in
the Elk's Club. I worked there every
weekend. The guitar player's name was
McGee, and mine was Robinson, so we called
it The McSon Trio. We had a nice little
trio and that was the first thing I had
that I could honestly say was mine. Every
weekend we knew we would make something,
and after I had worked there for five
weekends or so, the guy at the Rocking
Chair, which was a much nicer club,
decided they wanted to hire us.
In those days, I lived on 20th Avenue. I
had a little house, nothing fancy. We had
an oil heater and I remember we went out
to get kerosene to put in the damn heater.
While I was living there, I bought the
first little electric piano that came out
-- that shows you how far back it goes. I
didn't have much money, but I had the
things I needed. I had a radio, but not a
TV. It was a big radio with a record
player in it.
During my time in Seattle, I met and
worked with some musicians who later made
names for themselves. There was a fellow
named Bumps Blackwell who had a band. As I
recall, he hired me to play a gig one
night with him. There was a young guy
named Quincy Jones in the band. I think we
may have first met in a club -- maybe the
908 or the Black and Tan or the Elk's
Club. It probably sounds like I'm making
our meeting insignificant, but musicians
just meet; it ain't no big deal. Quincy
and I became very good friends because I
could write music and he wanted to learn
how to write. He would come over to my
house in the morning, wake me up, and sit
at the piano while I would show him how to
do little things. That's how we became
very close. I have always loved him and
he's the same way now as he was as a kid
-- just as sweet and nice.
I first met Jack Lauderdale of Swingtime
Records when we were at the Rocking Chair.
There was a private club upstairs --
that's where they would gamble at -- and
downstairs was where we were working. Jack
was there one night and he came downstairs
and heard us playing. He said, "I'd
like to sign you guys up to a contract.
What would you think about that?" Oh,
Man, I was so excited! "Wow! We're
gonna get a record contract!" There
was nothing about any advance or money up
front. All the man said to me was the he
was gonna record me, and we'd have a hit.
I didn't even ask about the terms. All I
knew was that I wanted to make a record;
this was a big thing to me at that time.
Jack was the first person I signed with,
and I have to give him credit. I don't
know what he heard, but he must have heard
something -- because he recorded me in
Seattle and then flew us down to record in
L.A.
After arriving in Los Angeles around 1950,
I made a record called "Baby, Let Me
Hold Your Hand." It started making a
little noise -- in the black community, of
course -- and Swingtime thought it would
be a good idea if Lowell Fulson and I went
out on the road together as a package,
'cause Lowell had "Everyday I Had the
Blues" and I had "Baby, Let Me
Hold Your Hand." And so that's what
we did.
When Lowell and I were on the road, we
played the same kinds of dance halls, that
I worked in down in Florida. We were
working everyday on this tour, which was
okay. Of course, in those days we put up
with "the usual things." I
didn't go into the Hilton Hotel, I didn't
go into the Sheraton, I had to stay in
rooming houses. I had to make sure I
stopped at the right gas station, where
they had restrooms for colored, and if I
was hungry I couldn't stop at just any
restaurant to eat, so if I was long
distance between places and I saw a
restaurant, I had to go around to the back
door and let them hand me out sandwiches.
"Baby, Let Me Hold Your Hand,"
was my first big hit on the radio, but I
had heard myself before, singing my first
record, "I Love You, I Love You"
and "Confession Blues." To tell
the truth, hearing my songs on the radio
was no where near as exciting as making a
record. I really wasn't that excited about
hearing myself; I was more excited about
making music. I did make some records for
Swingtime where I sound like myself, where
I wasn't trying to sound like Nat Cole.
One of them was "Going to the River
and Drown Myself," another was
"Kiss Me, Baby." I was testing
the waters then, just before I went to
Atlantic. Even when I started recording
for them, I made two or three records
sounding like Nat Cole. After that, I
finally told myself, "Stop this Nat
Cole imitation...sink, swim, or die."
Next I did "I Got a Woman" and
it was a smash.
I made a big change professionally when
Atlantic bought my contract from Swingtime.
Originally, I didn't know anything about
it. By the time I found out, Atlantic had
already bought the rights from Jack.
Naturally, buying my contract didn't mean
anything if I didn't agree to go along,
but Atlantic had the contract from Jack
and, of course, it was all right with me.
I didn't see anything wrong with it.
Atlantic was very good to me. They didn't
interfere with my music. they would say to
me, "Okay, we want you to come in and
record." Then they would send me
different demos of music, and if I didn't
like them I'd write something and record
that instead. It just turned out that most
of the things I wrote were successful, and
Atlantic would just come in and pay the
bill. It was unusual, really, because
record companies in those days picked the
music and the artist sang it and that's
the ways it was done. I was lucky in the
sense that even when I was starting out I
went to companies that didn't interfere
with what I wanted to record, even
Swingtime would just say, "Well, kid,
what do you got for us?" And that was
it. For an artist, there are few things
more rewarding than the freedom to do the
things you want to do the way you want to
do them.
I was with Atlantic from 1952 to 1959. I
had control of what I was recording, so if
I made any bad recordings or bad decisions
I have to say it was strictly my own
fault. Most of what we were doing in those
days were singles; they were more popular
than albums. I only did two albums on
Atlantic. The first album was a jazz album
I did with Quincy Jones, which had songs
like "Doodlin'." The second
album, The Genius of Ray Charles, Quincy
wrote with Ralph Burns.
About that time -- still with my smaller
band -- I was thinkin' I really wanted to
introduce a girl sound to my music. Don't
forget, I was raised in a Baptist church
and I wanted my music to have a certain
kind of feelin'. One night in 1957, I was
in Philadelphia and there was a band
playin' -- I forget who was playin' -- but
I went to catch the band and on this show
they had a second band performing called
The Cookies. Well, The Cookies sounded
pretty good to me. So the following week,
we recorded together in New York, I think
we did Swany River Rock. And it sounded so
good, I asked them to work with me all the
time. That's when The Cookies -- Margie
Hendrix, Ethel (Darlene) McCrae and Pat
Lyles -- became The Raelettes.
By 1959, my career was on the fast track.
Although I didn't know it when I signed
with ABC, things were about to start
happening for me at a much faster pace
then I ever thought possible when I was a
kid back at the St. Augustine's school.
But that's another story, for another
time.
