If fate has a bookie, the early line on Ray Charles' chances for success would have attracted only the most desperate gamblers. After being born into extreme poverty in Albany, Georgia on September 23, 1930, Charles' childhood was marked by a series of tragedies: at age five, he helplessly witnessed his younger brother drown in an iron tub; suspected glaucoma claimed his vision at seven years old; and his mother died when he was a fifteen-year-old teenager at boarding school.

Today at age ...