Why did Ray Charles go blind?

American singer and pianist Ray Charles’s childhood left him with a permanent loss that would decades later become a trademark of a global icon.

Charles was blinded during childhood.

Charles himself was not born blind, but he slowly started experiencing gradual vision loss at the age of four. Charles did not lose his sight until he was about seven years old. Years later, doctors suggested that his blindness was caused by juvenile glaucoma. Neighbors in Charles’s hometown of Greenville, Florida pitied the boy, but Charles’ mother Retha had no patience for sympathy.

Shortly after the vision impairment in 1937, Ray Charles was sent to St. Augustine, Florida to attend a special school for the deaf and visually impaired.

Ray Charles never saw blindness as a handicap, on the contrary.

Charles would go on to become a famous singer for the hit songs I’ve Got a Woman, Georgia On My Mind, and Hallelujah, I Love Her, as well as being known for pioneering the soul music genre during the 1950s.

Who would have thought that the boy from Florida would become one of the first black musicians to be granted artistic control by a mainstream record company?