50 free Ray Charles trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Ray Charles trivia quiz covers the man his peers called The Genius, from a boogie-woogie piano in a Florida café to the songs that fused gospel, blues, jazz and country into soul music. The easy questions cover the landmarks: where he was born, why he wore dark glasses, the state song he made his own, and the actor who won an Oscar playing him. From there the quiz gets into his early years in Seattle with a teenage Quincy Jones, the Atlantic hits, the ABC deal that gave him ownership of his masters, and Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. The hard and expert questions are for people who have read Brother Ray: the name of his first trio, the Cookies who became the Raelettes, the heroin arrests and the rehab, the Augusta concert he cancelled over segregation, the chess hobby, his Country Music Hall of Fame induction, and the duets album that won eight Grammys after his death. Every answer was checked against Ray Charles's encyclopaedia entry before publishing. If you enjoy this, try our soul music, jazz and Motown quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Ray Charles was raised largely in Greenville, a small town in which state?
Florida
He was born across the state line in Albany, Georgia, in September 1930, and returned to Greenville with his mother as an infant.
Q 02What was Ray Charles's surname at birth, later dropped from his stage name?
Robinson
Confusingly, his mother had also taken the surname Robinson after being informally adopted by his father's family.
Q 03Charles was completely blind by what age?
Seven
Glaucoma is the likely cause; the loss of sight is why he adopted his trademark dark glasses.
Q 04Charles attended a school for the deaf and blind in which city from 1937 to 1945?
St. Augustine
There he learned piano, alto sax, clarinet, trumpet and organ, and read music in Braille.
Q 05Whose playing at the Red Wing Cafe first sparked three-year-old Ray Charles's interest in the piano?
Wylie Pitman
Pitman went on to teach him piano, and Charles and his mother sometimes lived at the café when money ran out.
Q 06Which 1960 Charles recording was his first Hot 100 No. 1 and became a state song in 1979?
Georgia on My Mind
Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell wrote it in 1930; Charles performed it on the floor of the state legislature when it was adopted.
Q 07Which actor won the Best Actor Oscar for playing Charles in the 2004 biopic Ray?
Jamie Foxx
The film covers Charles's life from the mid-1930s to 1979 and was released four months after his death.
Q 08Contemporaries called Ray Charles 'The Genius'; what did he prefer friends and musicians to call him?
Brother Ray
Frank Sinatra called him 'the only true genius in show business', a label Charles played down.
Q 09Charles moved to Seattle in 1948 and befriended which 15-year-old future producer there?
Quincy Jones
Their friendship lasted a lifetime and they later shared a Grammy-winning R&B No. 1 with Chaka Khan in 1990.
Q 10What was the name of Charles's Seattle group that played the 1-to-5 a.m. shift at the Rocking Chair?
The McSon Trio
The name combined guitarist McKee's surname with Charles's own; 'Confession Blues' in 1949 became his first national hit.
Q 11Which singer did Charles model himself on in his early career?
Nat King Cole
Louis Jordan, Charles Brown and Art Tatum were also influences, but Cole was the primary one.
Q 12Atlantic Records bought Charles's contract from Swing Time in 1952 for how much?
$2,500
Founder Ahmet Ertegun signed him after Swing Time folded; his first Atlantic session came that September.
Q 13Charles's 1954 hit 'I've Got a Woman' was later admitted to be based on which gospel song?
It Must Be Jesus
Bandleader Renald Richard wrote the lyrics, though Charles claimed the composition; it reached No. 2 on the R&B chart.
Q 21What was the name of the record label Charles founded in 1962?
Tangerine
ABC-Paramount promoted and distributed it; he later founded Crossover Records after leaving ABC in 1974.
Q 22Charles's 1961 Indianapolis drug case was dropped for what reason?
The search lacked a proper warrant
He was 31 and said he had been an addict since 16; his third arrest, at Boston's Logan Airport in 1964, finally led him to quit.
Q 23After his 1964 arrest, Charles quit heroin cold turkey at a hospital in which California city?
Lynwood
He then spent time at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts and received a five-year suspended sentence.
Q 14Charles hired a female vocal group called the Cookies and renamed them what?
The Raelettes
Two members, Margie Hendrix and Mae Mosley Lyles, each had a child with him.
Q 15Which 1959 single, banned by some stations as suggestive, was Charles's first top-ten pop hit?
What'd I Say
He said he wrote it spontaneously on stage; it hit No. 6 pop and No. 1 R&B.
Q 16Charles left Atlantic in 1959 for ABC, which offered him a royalty rate of how much on every dollar?
75 cents
Atlantic's founders told him to take the deal because they could not match it, and the two sides stayed friends.
Q 17Charles's ABC contract included a then-rare perk: eventual ownership of what?
His master tapes
The income it generated later sapped his motivation to write new material, and he became mostly a cover artist.
Q 18Who wrote 'Hit the Road Jack', which earned Charles a Grammy?
Percy Mayfield
Mayfield was himself an R&B singer; Don Gibson and Buck Owens wrote other songs Charles covered.
Q 19Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, released in 1962, was the first Charles album to do what?
Top the Billboard 200
It helped bring country into the pop mainstream and spawned a sequel the same year.
Q 20Charles's cover of which Don Gibson song was his only UK No. 1 and a five-week US pop No. 1?
I Can't Stop Loving You
It also spent ten weeks at No. 1 on the R&B chart.
Q 24Charles's psychiatrist taught him which game as part of his therapy when he quit heroin?
Chess
He used a board with raised squares and holes for the pieces, and in 2002 lost a game to grandmaster Larry Evans.
Q 25Charles's 1966 hits 'I Don't Need No Doctor' and 'Let's Go Get Stoned' were co-written by which songwriting duo?
Ashford & Simpson
Jo Armstead also co-wrote them; 'Let's Go Get Stoned' was his first R&B No. 1 in years.
Q 26Charles cancelled a 1961 concert in Augusta, Georgia, after learning what?
The dance floor was whites-only
The promoter sued and he was fined $757; he returned to play a desegregated show at the same auditorium in 1963.
Q 27Charles's gospel-tinged 'America the Beautiful' appeared on which 1972 album?
A Message from the People
Barack Obama later called it 'the most patriotic piece of music ever performed'.
Q 28Charles appeared in which 1980 musical comedy film?
The Blues Brothers
Three years earlier he had hosted Saturday Night Live.
Q 29Charles was criticised for performing in 1981 at Sun City, a resort in which country then under boycott?
South Africa
He argued that his black and white fans would integrate while he was there.
Q 30'Seven Spanish Angels' was a country hit duet between Charles and which longtime friend?
Willie Nelson
His 1980s Columbia years produced a string of country albums and duets.