Ray Charles (born September 23, 1930, called a “genius” and the “father of soul.” With perfect pitch and an expressive voice, he combines worlds as diverse as jazz, country, rhythm and blues, and gospel to break your heart or make you dance. His name is Ray Charles, and if you turn your radio to any station you will hear the influence of his ground-breaking music.

Ray Charles was born into a poor family on September 23, 1930 in Albany, Georgia, though he was raised in Florida. Completely blind by the age of seven, Charles attended the Saint Augustine School of the Blind and Deaf where he began to study piano, saxophone, and clarinet. When he was only 15 his mother died (followed two years later by his father) and Charles began working as a traveling musician throughout Florida, and later Washington state.

. His “cool” sound was heavily influenced by the popular Nat “King” Cole, but he was beginning to find his style with a throatier, unrestrained sound reminiscent of gospel music. In 1950 he moved to Los Angeles , and by 1954 had his first big hit with Atlantic Records. “I Got A Woman,” combined the blues of greats like Guitar Slim with the sounds of gospel. This recording would make Charles famous and mark the beginning of a new genre, “soul.”

Charles spent the rest of the 1950s continuing to combine blues, gospel, and jazz in such hits as “In My Own Tears,” “What’d I Say,” “Unchain My Heart,” “Hit the Road Jack,” and “Georgia on My Mind.” With these dynamic compositions and his incredible popularity, Charles single-handedly changed the face of contemporary music. By the early 1960s, he formed a big band and had a top ten instrumental hit with “One Mint Julep.

Charles brought his unique style to a new audience and had major hits including “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” “Born To Lose” and “Busted.” In the mid-1960s, he was arrested for drug possession, which prompted his successful fight against a seventeen year heroin addiction. During this time, Charles kept a low profile though he did have hits with a number of Beatles’ covers, and the song “Crying Time.” His output during the 1970s included work with singers Randy Newman and Stevie Wonder.

In the 1980s, Charles was often in the public eye, making frequent appearances on television and in the movies. He had a number of albums and performed duets with many well-known musicians including Willie Nelson, Chaka Khan, and the Blues Brothers. His appearance on the 1985 release of “We Are the World,” brought a renewed interest in much of his work. During the 1990s he continued to write and perform, and in 1992 President Bill Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts.

Charles received 13 Grammy Awards, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and received a Kennedy Center and he was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1993. In 2002 the U.S. Library of Congress added “What’d I Say” to the National Recording Registry.

Bruce Springsteen (born September 23, 1949, grew up in Freehold, a mill town where his father worked as a labourer. His rebellious and artistic side led him to the nearby Jersey Shore, where his imagination was sparked by the rock band scene and the boardwalk life, high and low. After an apprenticeship in bar bands on the mid-Atlantic coast, Springsteen turned himself into a solo singer-songwriter in 1972 and auditioned for talent scout John Hammond, Sr., who immediately signed him to Columbia Records.

His first two albums, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, released in 1973, reflect folk rock, soul, and rhythm-and-blues influences, especially those of Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, and Stax/Volt Records. Springsteen’s voice, a rough baritone that he used to shout on up-tempo numbers and to more sensual effect on slower songs, was shown to good effect there, but his sometimes spectacular guitar playing, which ranged from dense power chord effects to straight 1950s rock and roll, had to be downplayed to fit the singer-songwriter format.

With his third album, Born to Run (1975), Springsteen transformed into a full-fledged rock and roller, heavily indebted to Phil Spector and Roy Orbison. The album, a diurnal song cycle, was a sensation even before it hit the shelves; indeed, the week of the album’s release, Columbia’s public relations campaign landed Springsteen on the covers of both Time and Newsweek. But it sold only middling well, and three years passed before the follow-up—the darker, tougher Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)—appeared.

With “Hungry Heart,” from The River (1980), Springsteen finally scored an international hit single. By then, however, he was best known for his stage shows, three- and four-hour extravaganzas with his E Street Band that blended rock, folk, and soul with dramatic intensity and exuberant humour. The band—a crew of mixed stereotypes, from rock-and-roll bandit to cool music professional—was more like a gang than a musical unit, apparently held together by little other than faith in its leader. Springsteen’s relationship and interplay onstage with African American saxophonist Clarence Clemons was particularly iconic.

In 2016 Springsteen released the critically acclaimed memoir Born to Run. That year he also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2017 Springsteen on Broadway premiered and was an immediate hit with critics and theatregoers.

In 2020 Springsteen reconvened the E Street Band to record Letter to You live in the studio. Like Western Stars, it took on aging and mortality, but here he also movingly and eloquently expressed the power of music to sustain humanity and the relationship of the musicians to each other and to the audience.

Source: Brittanica Enc., P.B.S -.American Masters,