Ray Charles: September 23, 1930 to June 10, 2004 (aged 73 years)
Ray Charles possessed one of the most recognizable voices in American music. In the words of musicologist Henry Pleasants:
Frank Sinatra, and Bing Crosby before him, had been masters of words. Ray Charles is a master of sounds. His records disclose an extraordinary assortment of slurs, glides, turns, shrieks, wails, breaks, shouts, screams and hollers, all wonderfully controlled, disciplined by inspired musicianship, and harnessed to ingenious subtleties of harmony, dynamics and rhythm... It is either the singing of a man whose vocabulary is inadequate to express what is in his heart and mind or of one whose feelings are too intense for satisfactory verbal or conventionally melodic articulation. He can’t tell it to you. He can’t even sing it to you. He has to cry out to you, or shout to you, in tones eloquent of despair — or exaltation. The voice alone, with little assistance from the text or the notated music, conveys the message.
Ray Charles was married twice and had 12 children with nine different women. His first marriage to Eileen Williams was brief: July 31, 1951 to 1952. He had three children from his second marriage, to Della Beatrice Howard Robinson from April 5, 1955 to 1977. His long term girlfriend and partner at the time of his death was Norma Pinella.
A list of his children:
- Born 1950: Evelyn Robinson (to Louise Mitchell)
- Born 1955: Ray Charles Robinson, Jr. (to Della Robinson)
- Born 1958: David Robinson (to Della Robinson)
- Born 1959: Charles Wayne Robinson (to Margie Hendricks)
- Born 1960: Reverend Robert Robinson (to Della Robinson)
- Born 1961: Raenee Robinson (to Mae Mosely Lyles)
- Born 1963: Sheila Raye Charles Robinson (to Sandra Jean Betts)
- Born 1966: Alicia Robinson (unknown)
- Born 1968: Alexandra Robinson (to Chantal Bertrand)
- Born 1977: Vincent Robinson (to Arlette Kotchounian)
- Born 1978: Robyn Robinson (to Gloria Moffett)
- Born 1987: Ryan Corey Robinson (to Mary Anne den Bok)
Charles gave 10 of his 12 children checks for one million USD in December 2002 at a family luncheon, while the other two could not make it.
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