Ray Charles released plenty of hits throughout his career, but these are three of his songs that everybody should know.

The Ray Charles we heard on “Georgia On My Mind” was 30. He sounded 300. By 1960, Charles had been working as a musician for 13 years, playing around with every form of popular music that America had ...

Few artists can claim to have had such a wide-ranging impact on music as Ray Charles. During a career that has spanned some 58 years, the icon performed on more than 250 albums -- many of them top ...

The title “genius” was formally bestowed on Ray Charles with the release of his 1959 album The Genius of Ray Charles. Though he was not yet thirty at that point, Charles had already helped invent what ...

Ray Charles may have been born in Georgia, but he was discovered in Seattle after playing at the local Rocking Chair club and doing his earliest recordings on the city’s Down Beat label. Seattle is ...

The famed R&B song, which was written by artist Percy Mayfield and recorded, of course, by the legendary American songwriter, Ray Charles, was a No. 1 hit in the United States upon its release in 1961 ...

Note: NPR's First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify and Apple Music playlists at the bottom of the page. The album title itself is ...