Ray Charles - Hit the Road Jack

Ray Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004), was an American musician, maby the most responsible for developing soul music. Singers like Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson also did a great deal to pioneer the form, but Charles did even more to devise a new form of black pop by merging '50s R&B with gospel-powered vocals, adding plenty of flavor from contemporary jazz, blues, and (in the '60s) country.

As Billy Joel once noted: "This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley. I don't know if Ray was the architect of rock & roll, but he was certainly the first guy to do a lot of things . . . Who the hell ever put so many styles together and made it work?" . Frank Sinatra called Charles “the only true genius in show business.”

Then there was his singing; his style was among the most emotional and easily identifiable of any 20th century performer, up there with the likes of Elvis and Billie Holiday. He was also a superb keyboard player, arranger, and bandleader. The brilliance of his 1950s and '60s work, however, can't obscure the fact that he made few classic tracks after the mid-'60s, though he recorded often and performed until the year before his death.

Rolling Stone ranked Charles number 10 on their list of "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" in 2004,and number two on their November 2008 list of "100 Greatest Singers of All Time".

While with ABC, Charles became one of the first African-American musicians to be given artistic control by a mainstream record company. Ray Charles was blind since the age of six (from glaucoma).

"Hit the Road Jack" is a song written by rhythm and bluesman Percy Mayfield and first recorded in 1960 as an a capella demo sent to Art Rupe.
It became famous after it was recorded by Ray Charles. It hit number one for two weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, beginning on Monday, October 9, 1961. The song was also number one on the R&B Sides chart for five weeks, becoming Ray Charles' sixth number one on that chart.

The song is ranked #377 on the Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

"The above text is a mushup from AllMusic.com & Wikipedia."