Ray Charles Bio

Stephania Chery

Prof: Hamilton Aaron

02/20/2015

Ray Charles is considered to be a musical genius in many different fields. Charles started receiving popular attention in around the 1950’s as the inventor of soul music. He was blind by the age of 7, and his mother sent him to a state-sponsored school, the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine, Florida, where he learned to read, write and arrange music in Braille. He also learned to play piano, organ, sax, clarinet and trumpet. He has a large success in pop, jazz, blues, country, gospel and western. This autobiography is parallel to five themes covered in the book. I’ll explain how similar Ray Charles’ life and career is to these themes.

Theme One: Listening is consciously seeking out the meaning of the songs by drawing on some knowledge of how the song is put together. Understanding the music’s cultural significance and historical development. Ray Charles was not only a wonderful singer but he also wrote beautifully “I Got a Woman", and the song became Charles' first number-one R&B hit in 1955 and brought him to national fame. This song was very controversial because of its elements, which are a mixture of gospel, jazz and blues. At this period of time gospel music was sacred song, pure. For Charles to do something like that was outrageous and the churches were scandalized. “If I feel the music that’s stated Ray Charles and it brought him more success.

Theme Two: music and identity. Pop music provides images of gender identity, ethnicity, and race. Popular music in America is closely tied up with stereotypes. For example, women as sexual objects, African American men as playboys and gangsters, southern white musicians as rednecks, etc.… Ray Charles had to g through the same identity crisis, because we all need to figure out who we are at some point. But as a blind black man, it was harder because of the stigma attached to being bling. When they have seen Charles got on the stage, they automatically saw this handicap person. But as soon as he opened his mouth and his fingers magically moving on the piano, he was who he wanted to be. Just Ray Charles. He created his own identity.

        Theme Three: music and technology. Technology has shaped popular music and has helped disseminate it. Technology is usually associated with novelty and change. Older technologies often take on important value as tokens of an earlier—and, it is often claimed, better—time Rejection of electronic technology functions as an emblem of technology can encourage more involvement. Although Charles career debuted in the 40’s, technology was somewhat indeed lacking. But today with all this new technology, Charles is old school, he was not going to sit there and just push a few buttons and be done with it. Because that is the new technology, you do less work with a few more machines.