In addition to multiple Grammy® Awards, including one for Lifetime Achievement, Charles is also one of the original inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a recipient of the Presidential Medal for the Arts, France's Legion of Honor and the Kennedy Center Honors.

He has also been inducted into numerous other music Halls of Fame, including those for Jazz and Rhythm and Blues, a testament to his enormous influence.

"You can't run away from yourself," Charles once said. "I was raised in the church and was around blues and would hear all these musicians on the jukeboxes and then I would go to revival meetings on Sunday morning. So I would get both sides of music. A lot of people at the time thought it was sacrilegious but all I was doing was singing the way I felt."

Last May, he headlined the White House Correspondents Dinner in Wash., DC, at which President and Mrs. Bush, Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, were in attendance, and he also starred with Vince Gill, George Jones and Glen Campbell in a Nashville television special saluting country music's top 100 hits.
Charles' performance of "Behind Closed Doors" on the TV special garnered the evening's biggest standing ovation.

In 2002, Charles celebrated the 40th anniversary of his first country hit, "I Can't Stop Loving You," which became a number one chart topper and expanded the scope of the entertainer's career to the industry's astonishment.
Last year, the press-shy Charles sat for interviews in Los Angeles with film star Clint Eastwood, who conversed with the music pioneer about the blues for a documentary, "Piano Blues," seen on PBS, and also reunited with his longtime friend and early record industry patron, Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic Records, for a television profile on the record label legend.

Early last summer, he performed his 10,000th career concert at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles.

In May, 2003, he also received his fifth doctorate from Dillard University in New Orleans.

In 2002, Charles and Adams endowed both Morehouse College and Albany State Univ., in Charles' birthplace of Albany, GA, with substantial contributions, exceeding $1 million each.

Sixteen years ago, Charles established the Ray Charles Robinson Foundation for the hearing impaired.

Since its creation, the foundation, with Charles' encouragement and generous, on-going funding, has blazed a trail of discovery in auditory physiology and hearing implantation.

Each such implant procedure costs upwards of $40,000, which the Foundation pays to have done.

Of some 145-celebrity charities, the Ray Charles Foundation is rated by non-profit experts as one of the top five most efficient with zero administrative overhead.

Recently, a series of slot machines were designed in Charles' name for the visually handicapped and the legendary performer was also named a "living legend" by the Library of Congress in 2002.

He also starred in a concert in May, 2002, at the Colosseum in Rome, the first musical performance there in 2,000 years.