Goodbye

Image credit: Ray Charles: Globe Photos

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And, really, does any artist better embody the great American dream of success against overwhelming odds than Charles? Born dirt-poor in 1930 to a single mother in Albany, Ga., Ray Charles Robinson (he would retire the surname in 1949 to avoid confusion with boxing champ Sugar Ray Robinson) watched his younger brother drown when he was 5. By the time he was 7, congenital juvenile glaucoma had rendered him completely sightless. He spent the next eight years at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, where he decided to become a professional musician. After his mother died suddenly of suspected food poisoning when he was 15, Charles left school to begin life as an itinerant piano player (at one point even managing to join an all-white country & western band). From 1945 through 1952, he scuffled on the so-called chitlin' circuit in Florida, Seattle, and Los Angeles. Finally, he signed to the fledgling Atlantic Records, for which he recorded many of his best-remembered sides (like the jubilant ''Hallelujah I Love Her So'' and his exuberant cover of Hank Snow's ''I'm Movin' On''). Many of them he essentially produced himself -- a privilege virtually unheard-of at the time.

Even more remarkable is that Charles was doing all this while suffering from a 17-year addiction to hard drugs. It's difficult to imagine the affable, grinning Charles of recent years as a junkie, but Keith Richards and Johnny Thunders had nothing on him. ''We didn't know about it, but he was in the grip of a horrible heroin addiction when he made his greatest records for us,'' says Wexler. ''How do you figure?'' (With a doctor's help, he would kick dope cold turkey after he was arrested for possession in 1965.)

It's a wonder that Charles didn't, to quote one of his best-loved songs, drown in his own tears. Yet over the years, he maintained a formidable sense of mischief. (Not to mention guts: Who else would put out a song called ''Let's Go Get Stoned'' right after beating his drug habit?) Patti LaBelle laughingly recalls Charles' penchant for ''touching women in the wrong places and getting away with it,'' saying she would kid him that she didn't believe he was really blind. ''Whenever I would see Ray Charles, he would always say, 'You look good.' And I would say, 'Oh, thank you, Ray. Yeah, I bet you can see me, brother man.' That was just my little private in-joke with Ray Charles.'' (Speaking of jokes, there is a memorable maxim about the requirements for becoming a member of his female backup group, the Raelettes: ''To become a Raelette, you have to let Ray'' -- a reference to the twice-married Charles' rep as a serial womanizer.)

Ironically, at the time of his death, Charles was poised to reenter public consciousness in a big way. In April, Concord Records announced that a new Charles album, his first new material in three years, would be released in August: ''Genius Loves Company'' is a celebratory affair featuring duets with Elton John, Diana Krall, Bonnie Raitt, Norah Jones, Willie Nelson, and others. Rhino Records is planning a new career-spanning 20-disc boxed set for 2005. And director Taylor Hackford (''The Devil's Advocate'') is readying a much-anticipated biopic, Ray, starring Jamie Foxx as Charles and slated to hit theaters in October. Can this flurry of projects help Charles make a posthumous comeback? Perhaps, but for many longtime fans, the singer has rarely been far from their hearts. ''Ray Charles never lost it,'' says Wexler. ''Ray always made nonpareil, individualistic, idiosyncratic, beautiful, deep soul-funk music. And it was his own.''

(Additional reporting by Bob Cannon and Neil Drumming)