Ray Charles Robinson was born in Albany, Georgia in 1930. After going blind at the age of 7, he was sent to a specialist school . It was here that he pursued his interest in performing music, learning the piano and saxophone. After leaving the school at the age of 17 he went on the road to look for work as a paid performer. This long and arduous journey on the so called "chitlin circuit" is now the stuff of legend and it was there that Ray honed his craft as a writer and arranger as well as a performer. His first break came in Seattle in the late 1940's when he began recording for the Swingtime Records label. After acheiving his first hit with "Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand" he signed to the newly formed Atlantic Records. It was here that his creativity really blossomed, culminating in his seminal opus, "The Genius of Ray Charles" in 1959. The lure of a luctrative contract and the right to own his own masters was too strong to resist and in 1959 Ray Charles signed to ABC Records. It was during his stay at the label that he enjoyed his biggest commercial successes such as the cross-over country album "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music" in 1962. During his early years, Ray Charles played a mixture of jazz and traditional blues. When R&B gained mainstream popularity in the late 1940's, Ray began the task of mastering this new genre and taking it to higher levels. This happened in the mid 1950's, when apparently rather spontaneously, he invented soul music. This was a mixture of the more traditional lyrical content of R&B and the more musically complex gospel. The music spawned a revolution and became the defining sound of pop music in the 1960's, despite early criticism and controversy due to its mix of secular and religious music. Depsite his many demons, Ray Charles has been reverred as a true pioneer of not just black music but popular music itself. It is quite conceivable that if Ray Charles hadn't existed there would have been no Motown, James Brown, Stevie Wonder ... the list goes on. Ray Charles Robinson passed away in 2004 after a long battle with disease and was recording and writing music right until the end. The ensuing tribute concert showed just how much of an impact he'd had, with performers from the world of soul, hip hop, country and jazz paying homage to the Genius of Ray Charles.