Ray Charles (continued)

Between the ages of seven and 15, Charles attended a school for the deaf and blind in St. Augustine, Florida. He first experienced the racial divide at that institution, which was segregated. To Charles, however, race was never an issue; "I don’t see any colors," was his standard line. He also discovered jazz while at the school, hearing Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman on the radio. But his first musical love was Billie Holiday thanks to her "Don’t Explain," a recording he said "stopped me right in my tracks." Soon the blossoming pianist fell under the spell of Nat Cole and Charles Brown. He borrowed their playing and vocal styles to begin his career when he graduated at 16. From both musicians he developed a flair for fills, light comping, and subtle chords to enhance his vocal melodies, and he performed material that drew on — in his words — "jazz improvisation, pretty melodies, hot rhythms, and an occasional taste of the blues."

Another pianist who had a profound influence on Charles but is rarely discussed in analysis of his style was the jazz virtuoso Art Tatum, whom Charles and virtually every other pianist of the ’40s and ’50s revered. From Tatum, he learned how to take a melody and crack it wide open in improvisational flights over the keys, and to head for that place where notes become a mirror for the soul. Perhaps it was Tatum’s zeal for polishing mottled chestnuts from unexpected genres into jazz pearls that encouraged Charles to buck the advice of handlers in 1962 and record his masterful Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music (ABC-Paramount). On the one occasion when young Charles met Tatum, he found himself speechless. "Must say," he told biographer Ritz, "that even later, when I got fairly good at the piano, I knew that I couldn’t even carry Art Tatum’s shit bucket."

But Charles did develop a personal style that brought him increasing fame from the mid ’50s through the mid ’60s, when he sold millions of records and won nine of his 12 Grammy awards. At first, his blend of gospel and blues was considered blasphemy. But that changed as the public embraced his sound and the advance of black rhythm-and-blues music into the white world of rock and roll continued. "There was a crossover between gospel music and the rhythm patterns of the blues, which I think came down through the years from slavery time," Charles explained in an ’80s interview. "But when I started doing things that would be based on an old gospel tune, I got criticism from the churches and from musicians, too. They thought it was sacrilegious or something and that I must be crazy. But I kept doing it, and instead of criticizing me for it, the people started saying I was an innovator. It’s like a manager who makes a decision. If it works, he’s a genius, and if it doesn’t, he’s an ass. What we did worked. So I became a genius for it."

Although Charles was revered for his musical gifts, he was no angel. For 17 years, he fed a heroin addiction that he kicked only after a 1964 arrest for drug possession at Boston’s Logan Airport threatened his career. He displayed his wicked humor by recording "Let’s Go Get Stoned" shortly after he became clean. Marijuana and gin remained his avowed vices, and he had a hearty sexual appetite. "I don’t like to conclude a day without female companionship," he said in Brother Ray. Charles attributed the failure of his first marriage to paternity suits, and he had physical relationships with a number of his back-up singers, the Raylettes. He also had a reputation for being difficult that came as much from outright orneriness as from his insistence on adhering to his own creative vision.

Nonetheless, Charles’s life — his rise from poverty, his musical excellence, his innovations, and his widespread international appeal — was a quintessential American success story. And it will continue as his music endures to touch and influence subsequent generations. We’ll also hear from him again on August 31 when the final album he recorded, Genius Loves Company (Hear Music), arrives in stores. The CD is a collection of duets that he cut with Elton John, B.B. King, Willie Nelson, Van Morrison, Nora Jones, Diana Krall, and others.