Charlie Rich, Silver Fox

Charlie was born in 1932 in Colt, Arkansas.  He is a well known singer and musician, covering country, rockabilly, jazz blues and gospel….

His family were cotton farmers, and were members of a church, where they sang.  He began to play saxophone, as a boy. He went to Arkansas State College, on a football scholarship but then transferred to another Arkansas university on a music scholarship.  However he did not stay long at college, leaving to join the Air Force in 1953.   He had married in 1952, and during his time in the Air force he kept up with his music.  In 1956, he left the military and he and his wife took a 500 acre farm near Memphis.

He went on playing jazz and blues, and beginning to write his own music... and tried to get a contract with Sam Phillips, who owned Sun Records which had been the starting ground for Elvis and Johnny Cash.

 In 1958 he began to work as a session musician for Phillips, playing with Johnny Cash and many others.   However his own singles were not that successful and after a few years, he left Sun, which did not pay that well and moved to another company…  he changed record companies several times in the 1960s but considered himself to be more of a jazz pianist than anything else…

However he swung over to the “Nashville sound” which was smooth, soft “genteel” country music which had become more popular from the late 50s onwards...  It was moving country music away from the rough, raw honky tonk style of earlier years. By the early 1970s Charlie was a popular “Nashville Sound” artist, a talented piano player who had huge hits with the pop style Behind Closed Doors and “The Most Beautiful Girl in the world”…He had more hits, but he was drinking heavily and appeared at the CMA Awards Ceremony in 1975, visibly under the weather.  He set fire to the nomination paper and  caused some annoyance.  His popularity began to decline. 

In the 1980s he lived quietly, rarely performing, though he was in a couple of films… and later on he produced another album which was more jazz influenced, in 1992. He was still not working all that much…

In 1995 he and his wife were travelling on a holiday road trip when he became ill.  He was treated with antibiotics and stopped for the night to rest... but died in his sleep at a motel... of a pulmonary embolism…

His career was not as successful as it could have been but he was a popular singer, known as the “Silver Fox” because of his silvery hair and smooth performance…