Ray Charles - Hit the Road Jack 

The first day of autumn and one of Ray Charles' favorite songs by Ray Charles - Hit the Road Jack.

Ray Charles would have turned 90 today, interestingly if he had celebrated his 40th birthday in Belgrade. The boy from Georgia went blind in the seventh year and one of the last things Ray saw was the death of his brother, he fell into a basin full of hot water and drowned in the fourth year, his mother already told him that she would not feel sorry for him because she will soon be blind and she left him when I was 14 years old. Despite everything, the blind man learned to play the piano, saxophone, organ, clarinet, trumpet and played chess brilliantly (which helped him beat heroin). He founded the first band in Seattle, he was 18, but he quickly disbanded. After he moved to Orlando, he went on a hunger strike for days, because at that time it was difficult for musicians to find any kind of engagement. Back in 1950, he was caught using opiates before a performance, and later at the airport, and was in prison for a year. He then wrote the song "Let's Go Get Stoned" to protest the arrest. His first big hit was the single "I Got a Woman" from 1954: the song topped the R&B charts a month after it was released. It was an unprecedented blend of gospel (church music) and R&B, with which Ray Charles founded his musical style better known as "soul".

He was soon nicknamed "Genius" and "High Priest of the Soul", and since 1960, his career has only gone up. He founded a foundation during his lifetime, which helps people who have hearing problems. Although he was blind, he thought it would be a much bigger handicap for him to be deaf, because music saved his life. In one of the performances as part of a tour around the country, the organizer conditioned Ray Charles to agree to a concert in which the black and white races will be separated in the concert hall. When Ray refused to perform under those conditions, the organizer sued him, and Charles lost the process and even received an official ban on performing on the territory of Georgia, which was a huge blow for him. The irony of life is reflected in the fact that 25 years after that unfortunate event, the song "Georgia on My Mind" became the official anthem of this country.

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