Ray Charles Robinson was born in Albany, Georgia on September 23, 1930. At the age of three, he began to show an interest in music by watching Pitman play on an old upright piano at Pitman’s Red Wing Cafe. Pitman later taught Charles how to play.

Ray’s younger brother George died tragically in a drowning accident when he was four years old. Charles began to lose his sight when he was five years old. Charles went completely blind before his eighth birthday due to glaucoma. Aretha, his mother, used her community connections to find a school that would accept a blind Black student.

What was Ray Charles’s net worth at the time of death?

He was one of the most famous musicians of the twentieth century, with a net worth of $75 million at the time of his death. Ray Charles came from humble and impoverished beginnings before achieving enormous success in the music industry.

From 1937 to 1945, he attended the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine, where he honed his musical talent, learning to read braille music and play classical piano. His mother died when he was 14 years old.

Ray, still reeling from the loss of both his mother and brother, dropped out of school and relocated to Jacksonville, Florida to live with a family friend, Charles Wayne Powell.