Real name: Charles Raymond Offenberg

Effective period / Period of releases: 1963 - 1968

American musician, singer, songwriter, vocal arranger & conductor.
Born September 13, 1918, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Died April 6, 2015, Beverly Hills, California, USA.
For the Soul/R&B singer, please use Ray Charles.

Charles was best known as founder and leader of the The Ray Charles Singers who were featured on Perry Como's records and television shows for 35 years, and were also known for a series of 30 choral record albums produced in the 1950s and 1960s for the Essex, MGM, Decca and Command labels. As a vocalist, Charles, along with Julia Rinker Miller, sang the theme song to the television series "Three's Company" ("Come and Knock on Our Door"). As a songwriter, Charles was best known for the choral anthem "Fifty Nifty United States" in which he set the names of the states to music in alphabetical order. It was originally written for The Perry Como Show. He is also known for "Letters, We Get Letters", also originally written for Como's show and later used on the Late Show with David Letterman. In his later years, he continued to serve as a musical consultant to television programs, most notably for 31 years on the Kennedy Center Honors. Charles was acknowledged as an authority on American popular music.

In May 1944, Offenberg changed his name to Ray Charles. This was several years before the rhythm and blues singer Ray Charles first recorded under the same name in the early 1950s. In 1947, he was the conductor for the Broadway hit "Finian's Rainbow," and conducted the original cast recording. Charles initially became associated with Perry Como in 1948 through his arrangements for the vocal group The Satisfiers. The group performed on Como's "The Chesterfield Supper Club." From 1949 to 1951, he was choral arranger-conductor on "The Big Show," the last big radio variety show with Tallulah Bankhead and Meredith Willson. Charles was also a soloist and sang in the choir on Manhattan Merry-Go-Round, Tuesday on Broadway, The Prudential Family Hour, The Celenese Hour, The Schafer Beer Program and The American Melody Hour, and he wrote the theme for Danny Kaye's 7-Up Radio Show. Before its relocation to Los Angeles, Charles did some singing on the radio show, "Your Hit Parade." In 1950, when the show returned to New York, he became the arranger and conductor of The Hit Paraders, the choral group on the show, first on radio and later when it went to television, for seven years.

For the next 35 years The Ray Charles Singers became a fixture on the Perry Como television show. In 1955, the 15-minute Perry Como Show moved back to NBC and became an hour-long program. In 1959, Charles produced the summer replacement for The Perry Como Show. In June 1959, the Ray Charles Singers, a name bestowed on them by Perry Como, began recording a series of albums. Due to advances in recording technology, they were able to create a softer sound than had been heard before and this was the birth of what has been called "easy listening". Record producer Jack Hansen used some of the singers to provide backing vocals for Buddy Holly's last songs, which Holly had composed and recorded shortly before his death in February 1959.