The Genius of Soul: How Ray Charles' Roots Just East of Tallahassee Shaped a Legend

The Genius Next Door

Ray Charles Robinson (1930-2004), known worldwide as "The Genius of Soul", is considered a true pioneer of American soul music and a legend in modern music. Musician Adrian Fogelin, of the Tallahassee-based band Hot Tamale, goes so far as to say he is "part of the bloodstream of the country".

Born in Albany, Georgia, and raised in Greenville, Florida, Charles began playing music at five. He grew up among a cluster of small houses and shacks under tall pines and oaks down a small, nameless road in a black quarter everyone called Jellyroll. The area was a sandy clearing in the woods where transient plantation workers hastily built tar-paper shacks when their work lasted more than one season. Nobody lived in Jellyroll long; nobody knew where their neighbors had come from, and nobody knew where the others were going next. On Sunday, everyone went to church, and during the week, they worked hard. They unwound at a local joint called Mr. Pit's Red Wing Cafe on Saturday night. Wiley Pitman, a jovial man known as a fine piano player, owned it. Charles received his first musical instruction at the Red Wing Cafe, mentored by Wiley Pitman (Mr. Pit), who always let the young Charles play a battered upright piano. This is also where he spent hours sitting on a bench next to the cafe jukebox, gaining inspiration from the music he heard.

From Greenville to Tallahassee

Around the age of seven, Charles lost his eyesight, which doctors guessed was caused by congenital juvenile glaucoma. Despite these hardships, his mother, Retha Robinson, was determined to equip him for life and taught him to be self-sufficient. To that end, she found a school for him with the help of neighbors and his doctor. In 1937, Charles was enrolled in the state-supported St. Augustine School for the Deaf and the Blind. During his eight years there, he received formal music education, mastered Braille, and learned to play the piano, organ, clarinet, trumpet, and saxophone. During summer breaks, he would take trips to Tallahassee to visit family. While in Tallahassee, he performed in Frenchtown, one of Florida's oldest historic black districts. Charles began frequent visits to Tallahassee in the 1940s as he began his career on the Southern "Chitlin Circuit", performing in places like Orlando, Tampa, and Jacksonville. He was also known to frequent and perform at the Red Bird Cafe on Macomb Street in the heart of Frenchtown. The Red Bird Cafe was a central music hub from the 1920s to the 1950s. Some writers have suggested that Frenchtown was an "ideal hub and rest stop for entertainers on the road between New Orleans and larger Florida cities".

A Worldwide and Local Legacy

After a long, successful career in music, he was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in Tallahassee in 1992. He also won seventeen Grammy awards (five posthumously) and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. His legacy is regarded as an essential element in the bedrock of American music. In 2005, his hometown of Greenville honored him with a bronze statue of his likeness that sits downtown next to a dedication plaque. Greenville also honors him by preserving his childhood home. Local tributes to him continue to this day. In 2022, Tallahassee musicians Adrian Fogelin and Craig Reader, the duo Hot Tamale, held a birthday tribute for Charles in the Greenville town square, playing acoustic versions of his songs.

By honoring the genius of Ray Charles, from the Frenchtown clubs where he performed to the humble Greenville quarter known as Jellyroll where he first touched piano keys, North Florida ensures that the bedrock of American soul music will forever remain rooted in our local history.