February 7, 1996
Web posted at: 11:25 p.m. EST
LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- Music is the very air that singer-musician and legend Ray Charles breathes, and it's what has kept him at the top of the heap and the headliner in many a palace and blues joint around the globe. But it's his courage and strength that make him a class act.
Music has also been a part of Charles' life since the age of 8, when he announced that he wanted to play clarinet like Artie Shaw. And he learned to blow the reed not only on the clarinet, but on the saxophone as well. Then he jumped to the ivories, where we know him best. (765K QuickTime movie of Ray Charles performing)
Charles' piano teacher didn't really jive with his lively renditions of classical music. "I would take things like Chopin or Beethoven and I would start putting jazz to it instead of playing the thing like it was," he says.
He began writing his own arrangements and heard his first composition played by a band when he was just 11. "It was overwhelming to me to hear these horns play something that I created. It was marvelous," Charles says.
But things were not always so marvelous for the boy growing up in Albany, Georgia. At age 6, it is believed that Ray Charles Robinson contracted glaucoma that went untreated. He was blind by the age of 11.
Before he lost his sight, he saw his brother drown, and his mother died when he was a teen, but not before she instilled in him a strong sense of independence.
"She knew I was going blind. (196K AIFF sound or 196K WAV sound) Her thing was, 'You've still got that brain, you can still sing and there are two ways to do everything. You just gotta figure out which one is good for you.' That was the influence my mom had on me," Charles says.
He has written those stories of triumph in a book called "My Early Years," which is hitting store shelves along with a CD collection of his favorite songs titled "Strong Love Affair."
And after all of these years of touring, film appearances, and rocking a church or two, Charles' contends that he has never strayed from his greatest love. "Here's where I'm gonna get in trouble. Nothing on this earth is more important to me than music. I feel if I can't play my music, I'm outta here."
But the world would probably tell him, pull up a chair, Ray, and play all you want.
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