Georgia was Not Always on His Mind

The Dark Side of Ray Charles

Nick Miller
Jul 10, 2017 · 6 min read

Imagine… a room filled with the sweet sound of blues. You can hear the soft whisper of the people in the audience as they stare mesmerized by the piano player. The smoke thickens the air. Slowly, you gaze up from the leather booth that you are sunk into, and from there you can observe the artist in his element. He’s swinging back and forth while billowing out the lines to a song. A song that you know, a song that everyone knows, a song that would become an legend. The face is familiar, but not because of the face itself but what is on his face: his signature Ray-Bans. You are in the 1950’s in a bar experiencing the music of Ray Charles himself. However, by being in his presence you can sense he has a darker side deep down inside of him, a life of loss, tragedy, and addiction.

The beginning years

The singer and songwriter that we know as Ray Charles was born in Albany, Georgia, as Horace Charles Robinson on September 23, 1930. Even from an early age Ray Charles had an interest in music and began to learn that art under the eye of Wylie Pitman. However, at the age of four Ray’s brother drowned and shortly after he began to lose his vision. By the age of seven his eyesight was completely gone. From there, his mother took Ray and enrolled him in the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind where he was able to continue learning about music.

Ray Charles and his iconic Sunglasses

The start of his career and life of poverty

At the age of 14, Charles’s mother died which left him as an orphan, but when Charles was 16 he moved to Jacksonville, Florida, to play music and to try to make a living with his musical talent. However, Ray was met with nothing but adversity, and poverty followed him where ever he went. More often than not, Charles would go days without food and at the same time work was hard to find because of World War II. This left him impoverished and and without hope the he would ever be able to play music for himself. He even tried out for Lucky Millinder and his sixteen-piece band but was turned down, but this did not stop Ray and his passion for making music. Then his life began to turn around when he joined the band named the McSon Trio where they recorded their first hit “Confession Blues”, a song that was released in 1949 and described Ray’s time with a girl that only loved him for his fortune.

Diving into drugs

Now that Ray had Joined the McSon Trio, Ray Charles began to dive into a life of drugs which would become a greater part of him even more so than his blindness. The first time he experimented wit drugs, he started off with marijuana because the owners at the bars would give it to him in an attempt to curb is anxiousness. However, he began to see it as a way to unlock the musical talent that resided within him. His use of marijuana lead him to try other drugs and eventually lead to an addiction to Heroin. He began to use heroin because it helped him deal with the loss and hatred that had filled his life: from watching his own brother drown before him but knowing that he could do nothing, his father leaving, and then the sudden death of his mother that left him all alone in the world.

The Addiction

The drugs began to take over his life. He could not live without them. The drugs were used to fill the void that was left after everything was gouged from his soul after the loss of everyone that he had loved. The drugs would numb him from the pain of his life, but when he finally came to, the pain would only become deeper. The pain would begin to control him, to adsorb him, to eventually become him. The pain of life would be the only feeling that he would know, and the only fix that he had was more drugs, to continue to fuel the flaming addiction that was inside him. It’s hard to be able to feel that pain, to be reminded of that pain everyday, and only for it to consume the every fiber of who you are. For the drugs to saturate the name that you had worked so hard to build for yourself.

[On his heroin addiction:] I did it to myself. It wasn’t society…it wasn’t a pusher, it wasn’t being blind or being black or being poor. It was all my doing. -Ray Charles

One of the records that he recorded with ABC Records

The impact of His Music

The music that Ray Charles created has touched the souls of people around the world. I remember one time at a band concert my band director and I were playing Georgia on My Mind together, I played the drums while he was on the saxophone and the band was in the background. I remember he gave the band a quick one two and then we were off playing the song. I was trembling in the chair that I was in, but then I looked at Mr. Fuller, my band director, and he gave me a look of confidence, and at that moment I new that everything was going to be fine. That is when the music took me away. I could feel it take over my body as the song progressed, and then there was a tingling sensation that ran down my spine. The song continued. I closed my eyes and I let the music take me away while my hands and feet continued with the song as I drifted away on every single note. It was a feeling like no other. A feeling that I yet to be able to find again. This is what the music of Ray Charles can do to a person.

His final chord

Ray Charles died on June 10, 2004 from acute liver disease while in his home in Beverly Hills, California. In the end, Charles had beat his drug addiction before he died and even upon his death he endowed a professorship of African-American culinary history at Dillard University. Still to this day Ray Charles continues to influence the music that we listen to. This story just goes to show that even in the face of insurmountable odds you can still leave your mark on the world.

Commit to Serve

2017 UGA Freshman College — Service Learning

Nick Miller

Written by

Commit to Serve

2017 UGA Freshman College — Service Learning

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