Q 01/05

Ray Charles was raised largely in Greenville, a small town in which state?

A) Florida

B) Georgia

C) Alabama

D) Mississippi

Answer · why

A) Florida

Florida. He was a few months old when his mother brought him to Greenville, and as a teenager he put the state far behind him, crossing the country to...

Q 02/05

What was Ray Charles's surname at birth, later dropped from his stage name?

A) Williams

B) Pitman

C) Robinson

D) Powell

Answer · why

C) Robinson

Robinson. He dropped it as a young working musician so that audiences would not confuse him with the champion boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, then a househo...

Q 03/05

Ray Charles was among the stars who sang on which 1985 charity single for African famine relief?

A) Do They Know It's Christmas

B) We Are the World

C) That's What Friends Are For

D) Hands Across America

Answer · why

B) We Are the World

We Are the World. He recorded it with USA for Africa, a choir of American stars gathered for a single session, who filed in past a sign reading 'Check...

Q 04/05

Charles attended a school for the deaf and blind in which city from 1937 to 1945?

A) Tallahassee

B) Gainesville

C) Macon

D) St. Augustine

Answer · why

D) St. Augustine

St. Augustine. At the state school he learned to repair radios and cars as well as to play piano, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet and organ, and he staye...

Q 05/05

What style did café owner Wylie Pitman play on the piano that first drew three-year-old Ray Charles to music?

A) Ragtime

B) Gospel hymns

C) Parlour waltzes

D) Boogie-woogie

Answer · why

D) Boogie-woogie

Boogie-woogie. Pitman sat the boy at the Red Wing Café's old upright and showed him where to put his fingers, the first piano lessons he ever had.