Charlie Poole

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You've seen lists of the top most influential country musicians: Hank Williams, Sr., Kitty Wells, Loretta Lynn, Jimmy Rogers, Dolly Parton, Roy Acuff, Tex Ritter, Buck Owens, and Gene Autry. Others may be a bit more problematical as their songs regularly defected to the pop charts: Glenn Campbell (who once said he didn't consider himself a country singer), Roger Miller (whose "England Swings" is pure pop), and even John Denver. In fact, in 1975 when Charlie Rich opened the envelope for Entertainer of the Year of the Country Music Association and saw John's name, he simply pulled out a cigarette lighter and burned the paper¹.

But in the myriad of lists posted on the Fount of All Knowledge, there is glaringly omitted mention of Charles Cleveland Poole. Of course, when Charlie was playing - the years from 1925 to 1930 - no one called the music "Country" and certainly not "Country and Western". Instead it was "Hillbilly".

Charlie's #1 hit has to be "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down". Among the musicians who have covered Charlie's song which he first recorded in 1925 are Benny Thomasson and Jerry Thomasson, Bill Keith, Blaine Sprouse, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, Country Gazette, Cowboy Copas, Dave Alvin, David Grisman, Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Merle Watson, Ricky Skaggs, Ernest Stoneman, Etta Baker, Gary Brewer, Howdy Forrester, Jacie Sites, John Jackson, John Rossbach and Chestnut Grove, Johnny Gimble, Judy Lynn, Kathy Kallick Band, Kessinger Brothers, Lester Flatt, The Foggy Mountain Boys, Loudon Wainwright III, Mark O'Connor, Norman Blake, Charlie Collins, Merle Travis, Joe Maphis, Mike Seeger, The New Strangers, Riley Puckett, Stones River Ranch Boys, The Chieftains, Lyle Lovett, The Earls of Leicester, The Holy Modal Rounders, The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Karl Shiflett and Big Country Show, The Kentucky Colonels, The McGee Brothers, Arthur Smith, The New Lost City Ramblers, The New North Carolina Ramblers, Tommy Jackson, Tony Trischka, Vernon Haddock's Jubilee Lovelies, W. Lee O'Daniel and His Hillbilly Boys, Wade and Fields Ward, Glen Smith, and the Yonder Mountain String Band.

We're talking influential.

But there's other of Charlie's tunes that have become standards. These songs include "If I Lose", "The Girl I Left in Sunny Tennessee", "I Was Born About 4000 Years Ago", "Good-bye Sweet Liza Jane" (not to be confused with the older "Little Liza Jane" that grade school kids used to sing), and the "White House Blues". The latter is a song about the assassination of the US President William McKinley.

At this point the reader will wonder. If this is a standard, why the hey haven't I heard it?

The explanation as to why Charlie's standards are not completely mainstream and his omission from The Lists is that Charlie's songs and the instrumentation of his band, The North Carolina Ramblers, were more d'accord with what ultimately became Bluegrass. That is, Charlie was playing what folklorists call Old Time Music or in common parlance, String Band Music.

Charlie was born in 1892 (plus or minus a year) in Randolph County, North Carolina. His folks were cotton mill workers and naturally he got the same job. But making string, yarn, and thread was not to his liking. Instead he preferred to be off playing music. But a job in the mill was steady work and he was able to save enough money for his first store-bought banjo.

What distinguished Charlie's playing was his technique. At that time the primary mode of playing banjo - and what was taught in the earliest banjo manuals - was the "clawhammer" or "frailing" style which is still used in Old Time Music today. Instead Charlie played with a three-finger style similar to that later popularized by Earl Scruggs. Earl himself said the first person he knew to play with three finger picking was a North Carolina banjoist named Smith Hammett. But the style actually has deeper roots.

Three finger banjo picking appeared in the late 19th century with the rise of the "classic" banjoist. The classic banjo player's technique was indeed similar to that of classical guitarists². But with only four melody strings, the classic banjoists play with the thumb, index, and middle fingers. A classical guitarist with a six stringed instrument uses the thumb, index, middle, and ring fingers.

The first classic banjoists were from the post-Civil War generation and reached their majorities in the late 19th and early 20th century. These pioneers are best exemplified by Vess Ossman, Fred Van Eps, and William J. Ball. However, these musicians - quite professional, by the way - usually played what we call jazz or ragtime. Sometimes it sounds more like what we now call "progressive" banjo with complex melodies requiring considerable virtuosity.

Charlie's playing though remained fairly straightforward and many modern listeners hear the recordings of the early country musicians as stiff and is what the more critical would call monotonous. Of course, the early country music was dance music and changing tempos and "expressive" playing could send the dancers crashing into each other.

Charlie's singing fit with the style of the music. There was little change in dynamics or tempo and certainly there were no conversational asides we see in the lighter tunes as played today. Although Charlie's range was a baritone, he sang with a higher timbre some of which may have resulted from the limitations of the recording technology of the time.

Nevertheless, Charlie's singing seemed to fit what we know of Charlie himself. By all accounts he could be a rather rough fellow. Like many young men of the region, he drank as much as was good for him (which worried his mom) and he would sometimes miss work and go out on the streets and play the banjo. He began leaving home for extended times to travel from town to town even though by 1910, Charlie was married and had a son. His usual modus was to set up on a sidewalk, put out an open cigar box or his hat, and "busk" (to use the modern term). Inevitably he would attract the attention of the local residents and might be invited to play at dances and parties. Then he would move on.

But Charlie didn't just play "hillbilly" music. Popular music from "Tin Pan Alley" was popular in rural areas as well as the city and one of Charlie's favorite singers was Al Jolson.

As you may guess, Charlie's wife, Maude, was not pleased being left at home with a young son, virtually no money, and having to live with her family and in-laws. In later years she claimed Charlie never stayed at home for more than a month before heading out on the road again. Eventually she told Charlie to beat it.

So by 1918 Charlie was back on his own. It was an opportune time. World War I was over and people wanted to be entertained. As the year wound down Charlie met fiddler Posey Rorer. The duo not only played at dances and parties but set up a bootlegging scheme which did surprisingly well and allowed Charlie to buy an even better instrument.

Charlie wasn't a full time musician, though, and he continued to work off and on in the cotton mills. With some money in his pocket, he married Posey's older sister, Lou Emma (who was in fact ten years Charlie's senior). Unlike Maude, Lou Emma didn't seem to mind Charlie's vocation of a sporadic mill worker and itinerant musician.

Although today there's much criticism of how the mill owners exploited their workers, it's also true that some mills actively provided for relaxation and recreation. Since dances were among the most popular activities having the workers provide their own music would keep entertainment costs down. Some owners would even hire music teachers.

By the early 1920's the duo of Charlie and Posey became a trio when they added guitarist William Woodlieff. But when Bill gave up performing to get married, his younger brother, Norman, took his place.

The three men kept up their rambling ways and in 1924, they were playing as the North Carolina Ramblers. The Ramblers acquired a solid reputation which ranged from Virginia to Tennessee and they were sought out to play at dances, parties, and as live entertainment in conjunction with that new fangled entertainment the cinema. But they would still supplement their musical income - which sometimes amounted to not much more than a place to stay and a meal and what they could get by passing the hat - with work in the mills.

Unfortunately Charlie did not mellow with age and could still be fractious and difficult to the point of being dangerous. Once the group was playing for a dance in Leaksville Junction about 75 miles northwest of Raleigh. As usual there was plenty of libation which the sponsors not only provided but also manufactured, sold, and transported - the last three activities then prohibited by law³. The dance got raided and when Charlie was about to be arrested he smashed his banjo over one of the officer's head. Another policemen pulled his gun and fired. Charlie was lucky to get by with only a grazed lip and some chipped teeth.

Charlie was even luckier to get off with a $100 fine although this was by no means a small sum in rural North Carolina⁴. Evidently Lou Emma was able to borrow the dough and Charlie was let go.

Although it is true that in the 1920's recording companies would send scouts to rural areas looking for talent, it's also true that most of the regional bands never got a chance. The scouts might be in a large town for a few days before moving on.

Charlie, though, was never one to take a passive stance and decided to be proactive. In 1925 he decided that the Ramblers were too good to simply tour the South. He told his friends that the Ramblers were heading to New York to cut some records. Fortunately Posey had relatives in New Jersey to put them up.

This was the time of accessibility. Charlie simply walked into the offices of the Columbia Record Company in Manhattan and ask for an audition. The executives were agreeable and were impressed enough to let the band cut four sides, although during the sessions, Charlie - uncharacteristically - was extremely nervous and had to be given something from a pharmacy to calm him down.

But it was worth it. One of the platters - "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down Blues" and "Can I Sleep Tonight in Your Barn, Mister?" - sold over 100,000 copies. The other record - "The Girl I Left in Sunny Tennessee" and "I'm the Man That Rode the Mule 'Round the World⁵" - sold 65,000 copies. Columbia offered Charlie a contract.

In the first days of the recording industry, it was typical for the musicians to get a flat fee for the recording session but no royalties. However, evidently there was some royalty deal with the Ramblers since Posey soon accused Charlie of keeping all the money for himself to buy booze. Charlie himself ranted that Posey was moonlighting for other companies. Posey soon left the group and afterwards except for Charlie, the North Carolina Ramblers had a fairly fluid membership.

Although his "hillbilly" records were selling well, Charlie wanted to branch out. However, the Columbia executives didn't think his style would fit with popular songs and told him to keep playing what he did best. Charlie - never one to accept an answer he didn't like - just went to other companies and recorded under another name. But ultimately his best sales were his Old Time songs released by Columbia.

After 1926 Charlie was able to become a full time touring professional. He played to sold out crowds and James, his son by his first marriage, joined him as a singer. But there were troubling signs. Charlie could not seem to curb his drinking, and he began to have heart palpitations. Also Charlie wanted to expand his audience to the North. Unfortunately in Ohio he didn't draw the expected audience and he returned to his old stomping grounds.

It was, as someone once said, the best of times; it was the worst of times. By 1925 the decade was still prosperous and the best recording technology had advanced to produce near modern quality. But by 1930 the Great Depression had arrived and fewer people could afford to pay for frivolities like concerts or phonographs and records. With money from his music falling off, Charlie returned home and once more got a job in the cotton mills. His drinking picked up and he became morose and depressed.

Then out of the blue, Charlie got a new offer - and from Hollywood of all places! A movie producer would give him an expense-paid trip to come to California so he could record for a motion picture soundtrack. But rather than the good news curbing Charlie's destructive behavior it made it worse. He began drinking more than ever, and before he could head to Hollywood, on May 21, 1931, he died of a heart attack.

References

"Charlie Poole, 1892-1931", Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, William Powell (Editor), University of North Carolina Press, 1996, (Reprinted on Documenting the American South.

North Carolina String Music Masters: Old-Time and Bluegrass Legends, Elizabeth Carlson, Arcadia Publishing, 2016.

Charlie Poole, Discography of American Historical Recordings, University of California at Santa Barbara Library.

"Don't Let Your Deal Go Down", Second Hand Songs.

Banjo Instructor: Containing the Elementary Principles of Music, Together With Examples and Lessons Necessary to Facilitate the Acquirement of a Perfect Knowledge of the Instrument to Which is Added a Choice Collection of Pieces, Numbering Over Fifty Popular Dances, Polkas, Melodies, &g. &c. Many of Which Have Never Before Been Published Composed and Arranged Expressly for This Work, Thomas F. Briggs, Oliver Diston and Company, 1855.

Measuring Worth.