Ray Charles Birthplace — Albany, Georgia

Ray Charles Robinson was born on September 23, 1930, in Albany, Georgia, though his family moved shortly after to Greenville, Florida, where he grew up in poverty in the segregated Deep South. He began losing his sight at age four from glaucoma and was completely blind by seven. He was sent to the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine at age seven, where he learned to read music in Braille and to play piano, organ, saxophone, clarinet, and trumpet — an education that formed the technical foundation for one of the most wide-ranging careers in American music.

Charles synthesised gospel, blues, jazz, country, and pop in a way no one had before him, and his recordings from the 1950s onward — "Georgia on My Mind," "Hit the Road Jack," "I Can't Stop Loving You," "What'd I Say" — reshaped American popular music. His decision to blend the sanctified sound of gospel with secular lyrics was considered scandalous by some in the Black church community, but it created soul music. His country recordings in the 1960s, particularly "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music," broke down racial barriers in that genre as well.

Albany recognises Charles as a native son. He is better commemorated in Greenville, Florida, where a historical marker stands near his childhood home, and in Seattle, Washington, where he got his start as a young performer. He died on June 10, 2004, in Beverly Hills, and is buried in Los Angeles.