Chapter 12: Gospel, Blues and R&B
Ray Charles Robinson (1930–2004), known simply as Ray Charles, was an important figure in American music during the 20th century. By blending the spiritual intensity of gospel with the energy of rhythm and blues he helped to develop a new style known as soul music.
Born in Albany, Georgia, in 1930, Charles lost his sight at age seven due to glaucoma. He attended the St. Augustine School for the Deaf and Blind in Florida, where he learned to read and write music using Braille and trained in classical piano and composition. After losing both parents during his teenage years, he left school at sixteen to pursue a career as a professional musician. He toured throughout the South and eventually moved to Seattle, where he gained recognition as a nightclub performer influenced by crooners like Nat King Cole, before developing his own distinctive style.
By 1952, Charles had signed with Atlantic Records and began recording songs that combined gospel sounds with secular lyrics and R&B instrumentation. His first notable hit, “I Got a Woman” (1954), adapted the gospel song “I Got a Savior,” pairing a familiar church melody with lyrics about romantic and sexual love. The song’s structure featured gospel-inspired call and response, melismatic singing, and a passionate vocal delivery, bringing elements of spiritual music into the secular rhythm and blues arena.
Charles continued this approach in songs such as:
“Talkin’ Bout You,” adapted from the gospel tune “Talkin’ ‘Bout Jesus”
“This Little Girl of Mine,” derived from “This Little Light of Mine”
“Ray’s Blues” and “What’d I Say,” which incorporated gospel call-and-response patterns.
In many of these songs, Charles added electric instruments, including the Fender Rhodes electric piano, making him one of the first artists to use this instrument in a popular music setting. His female backup group, The Raelettes, modeled after gospel choirs, provided tight harmonies and dynamic responses that heightened the energy of each performance. Their presence also set the precedent for future girl groups like The Supremes.
Though some critics and religious figures were outraged by what they saw as the “secularization of sacred music,” Charles saw no contradiction in his musical choices. As he explained in his autobiography,
“I’d been singing spirituals since I was three, and I’d been hearing the blues for just as long. So what could be more natural than to combine them?”
This hybridity of gospel and R&B reached new heights with “What’d I Say” (1959), a song so rhythmically ecstatic and vocally expressive that it walked the line between religious euphoria and sexual liberation. The song featured moaned phrases, grooved electric piano riffs, and a frenzied call-and-response between Charles and the Raelettes, culminating in a climax that echoed the emotional release of a Pentecostal revival.
Although Ray Charles has often been called the greatest gospel singer alive, it's worth noting that he never recorded a traditional gospel album. Instead, he took the spiritual techniques, vocal inflections, and emotional power of gospel and brought them into popular music, changing the sound of R&B, and helping lay the foundation for what would soon be called soul music.