- Born
- Died
- Birth nameCharles Ray Offenberg
- Ray Charles was born on September 13, 1918 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a composer, known for Radio Days (1987), The First Nine Months Are the Hardest (1971) and Three's Company (1976). He was married to Bernice P Rosengarden. He died on April 6, 2015 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
- SpouseBernice P Rosengarden(October 16, 1940 - January 8, 2003) (her death, 3 children)
- Together with Julia Rinker Miller, sang the theme song of the television series Three's Company (1976) ("Come and Knock on Our Door").
- Director of The Ray Charles Singers.
- Born Charles Raymond Offenberg in Chicago on September 13, 1918, Charles won a radio singing contest at 13 and had his own 15-minute program by 16. He went on to study at Chicago Musical College and Central YMCA College. He moved to New York in 1942 and began working in radio. Although he had been calling himself Ray Charles (an inversion of the name of a famous silent movie idol, Charles Ray) since high school, he did not legally change his name until 1944.
- Composer, conductor, songwriter and arranger, and the director of the Ray Charles Singers. He joined ASCAP in 1954, and has made many records.
- Ray Charles was best known for his long association with Perry Como, the smooth baritone who hosted a popular variety show on NBC in the 1950s and '60s. Charles and his singers not only backed Como on the show and 31 albums but accompanied him on tour. It was Como who introduced the group on the program as the Ray Charles Singers, and the name stuck. The Ray Charles Singers recorded more than 30 albums for the Essex, MGM, Decca and Command labels. They made the top 100 about a dozen times between 1955 and 1970 with such hits as "Love Me With All Your Heart" and "Al-Di-La." Charles' choral style raised hackles in the studio when he began recording in the 1950s. The sound engineer told Charles that the group's soft, whispering tones would be obliterated by surface noise on the record. "I told him that was his problem," Charles said in Joseph Lanza's book "Elevator Music; A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other Mood-song" (2004). "My whole theory of singing," he said in the book, "is that you were singing to someone no more than two feet away, like a lover".
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