Personal Life
Ray Charles Robinson was the son of Aretha Robinson, a sharecropper, and Bailey
Robinson, a railroad repair man, mechanic and handyman. Aretha Williams was a devout
Christian and the family attended the New Shiloh Baptist Church. When Ray was an infant, his family moved from Albany,Georgia, where he was born, to the poor black community on the western side of Greenville,Florida. In his early years, Charles showed a curiosity for
mechanical things and he often watched the neighborhood men working on their cars and farm machinery. His musical curiosity was sparked at Mr. Wiley Pit's Red Wing Cafe when Pit played boogie woogie on an old upright piano. Pit would care for George, Ray's brother, so as to take the burden off Williams. However, George drowned in the Williams' bath tub when he was four years old. After witnessing the death of his brother, Ray would feel an overwhelming sense of guilt later on in life.
Charles started to lose his sight at the age of five. He went completely blind by the age
of seven, apparently due to glaucoma. He attended school at the Florida School for the Deaf
and the Blind in St. Augustine from 1937 to 1945, where he developed his musical talent.
During this time he performed on WFOY radio in St. Augustine. His father died when he was 10 and his mother died five years after.
In school, Charles was taught only classical music, but he wanted to play the jazz and
blues he heard on the family radio. While at school, he became the school's premier musician. On Fridays, the South Campus Literary Society held assemblies where Charles would play piano and sing popular songs. It was here he established "RC Robinson and the Shop Boys" and sang his own arrangement of "Jingle Bell Boogie.” He spent his first Christmas at the school, but later the staff pitched in so that Charles could return to Greenville, as he did each summer.
After his mother died in 1945, Charles was 15 years old and didn't return to school. He
lived in Jacksonville with a couple who were friends of his mother. For over a year, he played
the piano for bands at the Ritz Theatre in LaVilla, earning $4 a night. Then he moved to
Orlando, and later Tampa, where he played with a southern band called The Florida Playboys. This is where he began his habit of always wearing sunglasses, made by designer Billy Stickles.