Ray Charles Robinson was born in 1930 in Albany, GA and raised by his mother Aretha. After losing his sight at age six, he was sent to the St. Augustine School for the Deaf and Blind in North Florida. It was there that Ray was given formal education in music. But Ray began playing piano long before he went to school.
Ray Charles: When I was about three years old, there was this elderly gentleman—his name was Wylie Pitman. He was a boogie-woogie pianist, and I was so fascinated by his playing, and I would just hit all the keys, and he would say, “Oh no no no, I’m going to teach you the melodies that you could play with one finger.” And that’s how I got started. And I was amazed, you could just strike a key and a tone would come out. That’s really what really got me interested in music. By the time I was five and a half or six years old, I was playing with three notes as a chord, you know. So I was doing things with (plays piano) by the time I was five and a half or six, you know. It was a learning process. As I said, after I was able to get into the piano class and I started to study music-
Nick Spitzer: This is in Florida when you’ve gone on to blind school?
RC: Yeah, St. Augustine is the blind school, actually for the deaf and the blind.
NS: Everyone together. But that piano that you learned from Mr. Pitman, were you able to play that for them and say, “Here’s where I am” and-
RC: No no no no, you’re going the wrong way!
NS: Put me on track.
RC: They didn’t do that in those days. When I was going to school, there was no jazz appreciation or anything like that. You studied Bach, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Sibelius, that was it. You didn’t go into class playing no jazz and blues and stuff. You had to play thing like (plays piano). You know, things like that. Of course that’s Beethoven, and we had to play Chopin, you know all the classical guys. So I was studying my music, of course you have to study classical music, and being blind you can’t read it and play it at the same time, you’ve got to learn it and then play it. At first I had thought about being a concert pianist but then I got in so much trouble with my music teacher because I would play the music, but I always wanted to add stuff. Of course you can’t do that! And so I finally decided I wanted to be able to play what I’m thinking.
NS: A live take on Ray's breakthrough hit "I Got a Woman," fusing R&B, gospel and more into a singular sound called "soul." But it would take years of searching for Ray Charles to find his own sound. After leaving the St. Augustine School, Ray played in nightclubs around Seattle, Los Angeles and New Orleans, where he was mostly known for his note-perfect imitations of popular singer-piano players.
RC: For many years I tried my utmost to sound like Nat Cole, and I became pretty good at it.
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