Ray Charles Dead at 73

Some singers have a signature song in a signature style. Ray Charles had a signature songbook that spanned genre and generations.

Charles, whose collection of hits instantly identifiable with his throaty growl and pounding piano included "Georgia on My Mind," "You Don't Know Me," "Hit the Road Jack," "Unchain My Heart," "I Can't Stop Loving You," "What'd I Say" and the most soulful "America the Beautiful" around, died Thursday morning of liver disease, his publicist said. Family and friends were with him at his Beverly Hills home. He was 73.

"I was born with music inside me," Charles wrote in his 1978 autobiography, Brother Ray. "Music was one of my parts...like my blood."

Charles' health had been in steep decline since he underwent hip-replacement surgery last November. At the time, the previously indefatigable performer, who had already battled emphysema, said he felt "terrific." A full recovery was expected and plans for a tour this March were broached.

But as the months passed, no tour materialized, and Charles appeared increasingly frail.

A statement from his publicist Thursday said that while the hip surgery was successful, doctors soon diagnosed "other ailments."

In March, a frail Charles received the NAACP Image Awards' Hall of Fame Award from longtime pal Quincy Jones. A month later, on April 30, Charles attended the historical dedication of his legendary RPM recording studios in Los Angeles. His trademark sunglasses were in place--Charles had lost his sight by age 7--but little else about him seemed the same. At the event, attended by jazz aficionado Clint Eastwood, among other starry friends, Charles was confined to a wheelchair, his legendary voice reduced to a whisper.

"I'm a little weak now, but I'm going to get stronger," Charles promised.

On Thursday, Eastwood, who interviewed Charles for PBS' 2003 documentary series The Blues, hailed the music legend as a friend and artist.

"We had a great time recently reminiscing together [on the documentary], and we will all miss him very much," Eastwood said in a statement.

Meanwhile, at Thursday's Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony, honoree Stevie Wonder choked back tears as he remembered his friend and mentor, calling Charles "a blessing" and saying he changed the world with his music.

Hip problems forced Charles off the road, where he'd logged more than 10,000 shows, last summer, after a July 20 date in Alexandria, Virginia. The subsequently scrapped tour marked the first time in his 58-year career that Charles had been grounded.

Never entirely idle, though, Charles recently completed work on a Frank Sinatra-style duets album, Genius Loves Company, to be released Aug. 31. Norah Jones, Willie Nelson and B.B. King are among those with whom he shares mike time.

"I lost one of my best friends, and I will miss him a lot," said a statement from Nelson, who cut Sinatra's "It Was a Very Good Year" with Charles last month. "It was great hanging out with him for a day."

Born Sept. 23, 1930, in Albany, Georgia, in what was then the segregated South, Charles overcame poverty, blindness (possibly due to glaucoma, possibly not--Charles said he was never convinced of the diagnosis) and family tragedy (his parents and a brother all died before Ray was 15) to become a jukebox star in 1959 with his first number-one hit, "Georgia on My Mind."

"Mr. Charles was the preeminent American musician, with a heart as grand as his talents," Grammy president Neil Portnow said in a statement Thursday.

His pop hits spanned the 1950s to the 1970s--from 1957's "Swanee River Rock" to 1971's "Booty Butt," with the intervening years including everything from a 1968 cover of "Eleanor Rigby" to a cool 1961 take on "One Mint Julep."

Sound-wise, Charles spanned jazz, R&B, gospel and country--he even charted there on a duet with Willie Nelson ("Seven Spanish Angels"). Above all, though, Charles was known as "The Genius of Soul."

Aretha Franklin, anointed the Queen of Soul, called Charles "the voice of a lifetime."

"He was a fabulous man, full of humor and wit," Franklin said in a statement. "A giant of an artist, and of course, he introduced the world to secular soul singing."

To Charles, soul was, as he once put it, "the feeling that comes through in the music...the words tell you that."

Though his personal life was turbulent--two broken marriages, as many as nine children (with his wives and various others), a 1964 heroin bust--he became a living, breathing monument, his lofty place in popular culture reinforced with that most-esteemed American achievement--a soda endorsement. (In Charles' case, Diet Pepsi in the early 1990s, backed by his all-girl chorus, the Raelettes.)

Of perhaps more import, his rendition of "America the Beautiful" became a staple at everything from ball games to political rallies. With no small assist from Charles, "Georgia on My Mind" became its namesake state's official song in 1979.

In his far-flung career, Charles won 12 competitive Grammys, earned three Emmy nominations, scored the Kennedy Center Honors, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Medal of Arts and inductions into the Rock, Jazz and Rhythm and Blues halls of fame.

He achieved cult-movie fame for his role in the 1980 musical-comedy, The Blues Brothers. Among other film roles, Charles played a bus driver in the 1996 comedy, Spy Hard.

Meant to be a gag--a blind man operating a motor vehicle--the Spy Hard bit wasn't far from the truth. The ever-resourceful Charles admitted to getting behind the wheel every now and then.

Charles' rags-to-riches story serves as big-screen fodder in the upcoming biopic, Unchain My Heart: The Ray Charles Story, starring Jamie Foxx as the entertainer. The movie is due to be released in high Oscar season--Oct. 29.

While there was no shortage of drama for the filmmakers to mine, Charles talked about his life--especially his music--in elemental terms.

"I play my music for the enjoyment of the people because they love my music and they respond to it and I love them," Charles told the BBC in 2001. "They make me happy. I make them happy."

(Originally published at 12:40 p.m. PT.)