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ESSAY: Christopher John Farley on the soul of Ray Charles...
...When Ray Charles could see, he saw nothing but trouble. As an infant, he could see, if not understand, his father walking out on him and his teenage mother Aretha. At 6 months, he and his mother moved from his birthplace, Albany, Ga., to Greenville, Fla., where all he saw was poverty, with his family being even poorer than most, "nothing below us 'cept the ground," as he put it. At age 5, he saw his younger brother George drown in a washtub. At about that time Ray developed what may have been glaucoma. He soon found he could stare...
...Ray Charles, who died last week at 73, was born with the last name Robinson but dropped it to avoid being confused with the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. The two had a lot in common--Charles had taken as many hits in life as any pugilist. According to Jet magazine, Ray's mother told him, before she died when he was 15, "You might not be able to do things like a person who can see. But there are always two ways to do everything. You've just got to find the other...
From an early age, he was searching. Wylie Pitman, a shopkeeper from round the way in Greenville, had a piano and a jukebox, and he used to invite young Ray to play them both. On the jukebox, Ray would hear blues from Tampa Red, jazz from Count Basie and pop from Nat King Cole; other times he listened to the box's country or classical selections. On some days, Pitman let Ray bang the keys of his piano. "That's it, sonny, that's it!" Pitman would cry, when Ray was on to something good. At 7, Charles enrolled...
LETTERS MILESTONES YOUR TIME: Health ESSAY: The soul of Ray Charles...