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They were important songs during the years in which Milsap built his musical persona, and his relationship to them is similar to the reactions nearly every fan of popular music has for their own set of influential titles.

“Somebody can talk about a song, or I can hear a song right now on Sirius XM in my car and immediately I know what summer it was or when it came out,” he says.

That’s particularly true for “Georgia On My Mind,” a song Milsap performed when he was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 1990. Ray Charles launched the definitive version of that standard into public consciousness as Milsap was living out his own summer #17.

Charles would appropriately have a major impact on Milsap’s career choice. Through two editions of his album Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music, Charles showed how elastic great country songs could be. At a 1963 concert in Atlanta, Charles encouraged Milsap to pursue music – against the counsel of his high school and college instructors – setting the stage for Milsap’s own versatile entertainment journey.

“I was playing some songs at a piano in his dressing room,” Milsap recalls, “and he said, ‘Well, it sounds like that’s where your heart is, and that’s what you should follow.’ That sounded to me like an endorsement from Ray Charles. He said, ‘Just be around it. Absorb it every day of your life. Live and breath it every day.’ That’s exactly what I did.”

Milsap had been living music almost from the start. Born in Robbinsville, North Carolina, at the edge of the Smoky Mountains, he was enveloped in his early years by country – the region was crucial to such history-makers as Jimmie Rodgers, Chet Atkins and Dolly Parton. Milsap subsequently received classical training at the Governor Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh, though he notoriously frustrated his teachers by banging out Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard rock & roll on the keyboard when he was supposed to be practicing Mozart and Beethoven.

Milsap did some recording while attending college in the Atlanta area even before that backstage meeting with Charles, and in the wake of Charles’ encouragement, Milsap found his way onto New York’s Scepter label, where the roster also included Dionne Warwick and Chuck Jackson. One of Milsap’s singles, Ashford & Simpson’s composition “Never Had It So Good,” became a Top 5 R&B hit.

Milsap’s music continued to connect him with future Hall of Famers and key figures. He moved to Memphis, working frequently with producer Chips Moman (Neil Diamond, The Box Tops), who put him to work on several Elvis Presley sessions. Specific instructions from Elvis during recording on “Kentucky Rain” – “Hey, more thunder on the piano, Milsap!” – still ring in Ronnie’s ears.

During that time, he performed on Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip, first with J.J. Cale, then on his own. One night his audience included future Country Hall of Famer Charley Pride, who encouraged Milsap to try his hand in Music City. Opportunity came when he was invited to become the house singer at Nashville’s King of the Road Motor Inn, owned by Hall of Famer Roger Miller. Within weeks, Milsap signed a management deal with Pride’s manager, Jack D. Johnson, and recorded his first hits for RCA.