![]() Jones issued a statement Thursday saying, “There will never be another musician who did as much to break down the perceived walls of musical genres. Augustine, playing clarinet, piano and other instruments and learning to read music by Braille. He had lost his sight by the time he was 7.Ĭharles, who sang in a Baptist church choir as a youngster and later discovered jazz though a friend’s “Jazz at the Philharmonic” recordings, studied music at the State School for Deaf and Blind Children in St. His childhood was marked by poverty and tragedy - he witnessed his brother’s death when the younger boy fell into a washtub and drowned, and Ray was afflicted with glaucoma at 5. 23, 1930, in Albany, Ga., and moved with his family as an infant to Greenville, Fla. The women would come up to the bandstand and yell, ‘Just let me touch him once!’ It was like he had descended from heaven, a beloved idol and an inspiration to so many of us.” “We were on tour and playing these tobacco barns in the South and the crowd would just be packed in to see him. “Everyone felt like they knew Ray Charles and in a way they did, because he was embodied by his music,” said Ahmet Ertegun, Atlantic Records’ co-founder.
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