Charlie Rich

The Silver Fox was a country music superstar. Charlie Rich was an amazingly talented musician.Charlie was born in Forrest City, Arkansas, December 14, 1932. Soaked in jazz, blues, country and gospel while growing up, this fusion of styles was as much the key to his success as it was his undoing.one of his first groups, the Velvetones, secured a spot on local TV. They played jazz and r&b, performing the hard-nosed joints of the area. A hard-nosed joint is one in which the musicians perform behind poultry wire for their safety. Vocalist for this group was Charlie’s fiancee, Margaret Ann.After leaving the Air Force in 1956, he settled in Memphis to pursue his dream, and began playing in clubs there, finding that this was his element. Quickly he became a session artist for Judd Phillips, brother of Sun Records founder Sam Phillips. The best.Charlie was whacking riffs at a dive called the Sharecropper Club when he was heard by Bill Justis, a saxophonist and star of Sun Records, who asked Rich to write his arrangements. Sam Phillips heard the work and asked Rich to make some demos down at the recording studio. Phillips rejected the work as ‘too jazzy.’ Justis then gave Charlie some Jerry Lee Lewis records to digest and he quickly returned to the label as a studio musician, playing or singing on records with Justis, Johnny Cash, Lewis, Warren Smith, Billy Lee Riley, Carl Mann and Ray Smith. He also began to write songs, not just for himself, including Break Up for Lewis, The Ways Of A Woman In Love for Cash and I’m Coming Home for Mann. The latter was later cut by Elvis Presley. He was the master of so many genres it’s difficult for fans to get an accurate take on the man behind the music.It was at Sun that Charlie first met the man who would make him a star and become a country music legend in his own right, producer Billy Sherrill. The owner of Sun Records, Sam Phillips, had decided to branch out from Memphis by purchasing Billy’s Seventh Avenue studio in Nashville, he then hired Billy to engineer sessions for him. Beginning in 1961. Charlie Rich was traveling to Florida with his wife from Natchez, Mississippi, where he watched his son perform with Freddy Fender at a local casino, when he experienced a bout of severe coughing. After visiting a doctor in St. Francisville, Louisiana and receiving antibiotics, he continued traveling until he stopped to rest for the night. He died in his sleep on July 25, 1995, in a Hammond, Louisiana motel. He was 62 years old. The cause of death was a pulmonary embolism. He was buried in the Memorial Park Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee.

https://od.lk/fl/NDNfMjIwMzJf