Musical Millionaires Who Started Deep in Poverty
Music can be one way to a better life. Maribel Lee looks at several musicians who used music to raise themselves out of poverty.
Prior to achieving top spots in the music charts, these music maestros had to overcome a series of hardships and setbacks. Innate dedication to music armored these musicians from all that life could throw their way.
Before finding success as musicians, they were merely regular joes who depended on monetary handouts from others and unstoppable ambition to assist them along the path to fame and fortune.
These days they are icons, gracing the playlists of any music lover with an Android phone and a set of headphones.
Here is a brief chronicle of three musicians who rose from poverty and made millions from music.
Ray Charles
Despite life throwing every bad card in the deck at Ray Charles, he became “the father of soul” and an American music legend. Born Ray Charles Robinson in Georgia in 1930, he was the son of a mechanic and sharecropper. Early in his childhood, Charles experienced the trauma of his brother’s tragic drowning and thereafter progressively lost his eyesight. By age seven, he was fully blind. In St. Augustine, Florida, he was taught to read, write and arrange music in Braille, according to Biograpy.com. Charles soon displayed his affinity and diversity for music by learning to play piano, clarinet, trumpet and saxophone. After his mother died when he was halfway through his teens, he toured in the South for a year. While on the road, he developed a heroin addiction that lasted for years before he finally kicked it. Ray Charles then moved to Seattle, and within six years, Atlantic Records signed him. His ability to excel in every genre from jazz and R&B to pop, earned him the moniker “The Genius” by fellow musicians. Ray Charles composed several number one singles, won multiple Grammies and made a permanent mark in the American musical landscape.
Shania Twain
Born Eileen Edwards to an impoverished family, she was raised in the small mining town of Timmins, Ontario. The budding country music star was abused by her stepfather, noted Entertainment Weekly, but escaped her plight by writing lyrics and singing. In her teens, she performed on Canadian television, according to TheBiographyChannel.co.uk. When she tragically lost her mother and stepfather in a car accident, Twain took it upon herself to support her three younger siblings. She sang in local resorts until her siblings came of age and then went south to Nashville. Shania Twain became one of the most accomplished artists in the country genre, and her album “Come On Over” is the best-selling country album ever.
Bob Marley
The first international music star to come from a third-world country, Bob Marley helped present reggae music to a worldwide audience. Born in Jamaica, Marley spent much of his youth in the rural village of Nine Miles in the parish of St. Ann, noted Biography.com. He faced poverty in the latter 1950s in Trench Town, the “Motown of Jamaica” and one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Inspired by local performers in addition to Elvis and Ray Charles songs on the radio, Marley worked on his singing under mentor, Joe Higgs. He originally formed the Wailing Wailers with two friends in 1963 and they became a Jamaican sensation. In 1972, they were signed by Island Records and recorded their first full studio album. Throughout the ’70s, Bob Marley and his band achieved international success and Marley drew acclaim for his political and spiritually charged lyrics. More than 20 million albums were sold during his career and, in 1994, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
