Answer by taking a quote from the following article:

Gary Wright was born and raised in Cresskill, New Jersey. A child actor, he made his TV debut at the age of seven, on the show Captain Video and His Video Rangers, filmed in New York. Among other acting work, he appeared in TV and radio commercials, before being offered a part in the 1954 Broadway production of the musical Fanny. Wright played the role of Cesario, the son of Fanny, who was played by future Brady Bunch matriarch Florence Henderson.

Wright has described his initial musical influences as "early R&B" - namely, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, James Brown and Bobby Bland - along with rock 'n' roll artists Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, and the Beatles. While in Europe in 1967, Wright abandoned his plans to become a doctor and instead toured locally with a band he had formed, the New York Times. When the latter supported the English group Traffic - at Oslo in Norway, according to Wright - he met Island Records founder Chris Blackwell. Wright recalls that he and Blackwell had a mutual friend in Jimmy Miller, the New York-born producer of Island acts such as the Spencer Davis Group and Traffic.  Blackwell invited Wright to London, where he joined English singer and pianist Mike Harrison and drummer Mike Kellie in their band Art (formerly the VIPs). The group soon changed its name to Spooky Tooth, with Wright as joint lead vocalist and Hammond organ player. While noting the band's lack of significant commercial success over its career, The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll describes Spooky Tooth as "a bastion of Britain's hard-rock scene".  Spooky Tooth's first album was It's All About, released on Island in June 1968. Produced by Miller, it contained the Wright-composed "Sunshine Help Me" and six songs he co-wrote with either Miller, Harrison or Luther Grosvenor, the band's guitarist. Spooky Two, often considered the band's best work, followed in March 1969, with Miller again producing. Wright composed or co-composed seven of the album's eight songs, including "That Was Only Yesterday" and "Better By You, Better Than Me". Spooky Two sold well in America but, like It's All About, it failed to place on the UK's top 40 albums chart.  The third Spooky Tooth album was Ceremony, a Wright-instigated collaboration with French electronic music pioneer Pierre Henry, released in December 1969. Songwriting for all the tracks was credited to Henry and Wright, after the latter had passed the band's recordings on to Henry for what The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia terms "processed musique concrete overdubs".  Although Wright had traditionally provided an experimental influence within Spooky Tooth, he regretted the change of musical direction, saying in a 1973 interview: "We should have really taken off after Spooky Two but we got into the absurd situation of letting Pierre Henry make the Ceremony album. Then he took it back to France and remixed it." With bass player Greg Ridley having already left the band in 1969 to join Humble Pie, Wright departed in January 1970 to pursue a solo career.  The only members from the original lineup, Wright and Mike Harrison relaunched Spooky Tooth with Jones and Graham from Wonderwheel, and Chris Stewart, formerly the bassist with English singer Terry Reid. Salewicz visited the band while they were recording at Island's Notting Hill studio and remarked of Wright's role in the group, "it is clear who is the leader of this brand of Spooky Tooth, and, I suspect, of the original, too"; Salewicz described Wright as "urbane, loquacious with the remnants of a New Jersey accent, and a touch of Dudley Moore about the face".  On their new album, You Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw (1973), Wright composed six of the eight tracks, including "Cotton Growing Man", "Wildfire" and "Self Seeking Man", and co-wrote the remaining two. With the group's standing having been elevated since 1970 - a situation that music journalist Steven Rosen likened at the time to the Yardbirds, the Move and other 1960s bands after their break-up - Spooky Tooth toured extensively to promote the album. Rolling Stone reviewer Jon Tiven praised Wright's songwriting on You Broke My Heart, adding: "there is tremendous consistency to these originals ... and 'Wildfire' is ample proof that Gary could have written for the Temptations if he really wanted to."  The band released a follow-up, Witness, in November 1973, by which point Graham had departed, with Mike Kellie returning on drums. By February 1974, Stewart and Harrison had also left. In January that year, Wright accompanied George Harrison to India, where they journeyed to Varanasi (Benares), the Hindu spiritual capital of India, and home to Harrison's friend Ravi Shankar. The visit would influence the spiritual quality of Wright's lyrics when he returned to his solo career.  In England, he and Harrison worked together on The Place I Love (1974), the debut album by English duo Splinter. In addition to playing keyboards, Wright served as what author Simon Leng terms "a sounding board and musical amanuensis" on the project, which was the first album released on Harrison's Dark Horse record label. Wright regrouped with Spooky Tooth for a final album, The Mirror (1974), with Mike Patto as their new vocalist. Following further personnel changes, The Mirror was issued by Goodear Records in the UK in October 1974, a month after Wright had disbanded the group.  After Spooky Tooth's break-up, Wright returned to New Jersey and began compiling songs for his third solo album. Under the guidance of new manager Dee Anthony, he chose to sign with Warner Bros. Records, mainly because the company had no keyboard virtuosos among its other acts. Wright says that it was while routining his songs with all his stage equipment set up - Hammond organ, Hohner Clavinet, Fender Rhodes electric piano, Minimoog and ARP String Ensemble - together with a drum machine, that he decided to record the album "all on keyboards", without guitars. He acknowledges that artists such as Stevie Wonder had similarly released keyboard-dominated music, but "[Wonder] used brass and he used other things as well". On Wright's debut album for Warner Bros., The Dream Weaver (1975), he, David Foster and Bobby Lyle played a variety of keyboard instruments, supported only by drummers Jim Keltner and Andy Newmark, apart from a guitar part on the track "Power of Love". Jason Ankeny of AllMusic describes The Dream Weaver as "one of the first [rock albums] created solely via synthesizer technology".  The album was issued in July 1975 and enjoyed minimal success in America until the release of its second single, "Dream Weaver", in November. The song, which Wright had written on acoustic guitar after his visit to India with Harrison, went on to peak at number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 1 on the Cash Box singles chart. Wright's biggest hit, "Dream Weaver" sold over 1 million copies in the US and was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA in March 1976. The album climbed to number 7 on the Billboard 200 and was certified platinum. "Love Is Alive", originally the album's lead single, then hit number 2 on the Hot 100, and "Made to Love You" climbed to number 79. Although this commercial success was not repeated in the UK, The Dream Weaver was a big seller in West Germany, where, Wright says, Spooky Tooth had been "the number one band" during 1969.  Following the album's release, Wright toured extensively with a band comprising three keyboard players and a drummer. His elder sister Lorna, also a professional singer, joined the tour band as his backing vocalist. Subsidized by synthesizer manufacturers Moog and Oberheim, Wright became one of the first musicians to perform with a portable keyboard, in the style of Edgar Winter. Shawn Perry of vintagerock.com credits Wright with being "as responsible for the emergence of the synthesizer as a mainstream instrument as Keith Emerson and ... Rick Wakeman", while Robert Rodriguez describes Wright as a pioneer in both "the integration of synthesizers into analog recordings" and the use of the keyboard-guitar hybrid known as the keytar.  Among his live performances in 1976, Wright shared the bill with Yes and Peter Frampton at the US Bicentennial concert held at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, playing to a crowd estimated at 120,000. Wright then supported Frampton on a European tour, by which time a fourth keyboard player had been added to the band. Amid this success, A&M issued That Was Only Yesterday (1976) - a compilation containing tracks from Wright's albums for the label and selections by Spooky Tooth - which charted at number 172 in America.

WHat other influences does he name?
Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, James Brown and Bobby Bland