by Hamlet Pericles

Created on: November 04, 2009

Georgia, one of the original Thirteen Colonies and one of the seven original Confederate states, has a lot of history and has produced a great deal of famous natives - from politicians to activists, from sportspeople to musicians, etc. This article will profile five famous Georgians, along with a brief biography for each.

The first famous Georgian that will be profiled is musician

Ray Charles Robinson (known simply as Ray Charles), born in Albany, Georgia on September 23, 1930. He, at age 73, passed away from liver disease on June 10, 2004 in Beverly Hills, California.

When Charles was an infant, his parents Aretha Williams and Bailey Robinson left their Georgia home and relocated to a poor black community in Greenville, Florida. At the age of five, Charles started to lose his sight; at the age of seven, he was completely blind. The exact cause for his blindness was and is unknown. Some sources claim his blindness was caused by glaucoma, while other sources claim it was caused by a soap-like water that was constantly used on his eyes, leaving him with an eye-infection that was never treated, and thus rendered him blind. Charles, himself, had no clue how he went blind.

Because of his disability, Charles attended St. Augustine's Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind from 1937 to 1945. This is where he developed his musical talent and matured as a musician. At this school, he was only educated in classical music, but he was unsatisfied and wanted to play and be taught jazz and blues. In due time, Charles became the school's leading musician, playing the piano and singing at the school's assemblies and many holidays.

In 1945, at fifteen, Charles' mother Aretha Williams died (his father died five years earlier). Instead of returning to school, he decided to travel the state of Florida to perform with various bands. After a couple years, he decided it would be advantageous to move elsewhere to pursue his music career, so he moved to Seattle, Washington in 1947. He started recording with a couple and called themselves the Maxim Trio; their first hit came in 1949 with "Confession Blues."

In 1953, Charles was signed to Atlantic Records by Ahmet Ertegun, the co-founder and executive of the label. This is when he made a name for himself. Charles was advised to drop his last name so he would not be confused with boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, and so he did. His first two hits with Atlantic were "It Should Have Been Me" and "Don't You Know"; however, it was his 1954 hit

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