Five Things: Wednesday 15th January

“As the radio spit out Charlie Rich/Man, he sure can sing, that son of a bitch…”
Bob sends me a link to this extraordinary piece from the Oxford American’s Tennessee Music issue. Joe Hagen finds a way to add new things to a story where the subject is not only dead, but was heavily profiled (and more) by the peerless Peter Guralnick while alive. He finds a way in, through the people who were around Charlie and a suitcase full of fan mail. Here’s a taster: “Williams, his publicist, was charged with motivating him and keeping him off the booze. But the music business seemed to make Charlie miserable. For a magazine profile in 1974, he returned to his old farm in Arkansas to visit CJ, the black field hand who taught him to play piano, joined by Williams, Epic executive Dan Beck, a reporter named Carol Offen, and a female photographer, Raeanne Rubenstein. Offen recalls that Charlie was tortured by his heavy schedule, showing her on his calendar where he’d penciled in “Make love to Margaret Ann.” The only way to cope with touring, he told her, “is with pills and booze and that kind of crap—and I don’t want to live the rest of my life like that, and why should I?”

Visiting CJ at his dilapidated shack in rural Arkansas, Charlie seemed as happy as anybody had seen him, with a “beatific smile on his face.” CJ, in a blue porkpie hat and suspenders, started fingering the blues on his out-of-tune piano, singing a B. B. King song. “That’s it! That’s where you put the hex on me, right there!” Charlie yelled out. “Now, you talk about some soul!” He told Offen it was the first time he’d relaxed in four years.

What began as a tightly controlled PR junket soon turned into a beer-soaked misadventure, going from a local house party in the afternoon to a pizza parlor at midnight, where Charlie, getting increasingly smashed, asked that they play the somber “Feel Like Going Home,” the B side to “Behind Closed Doors,” on the jukebox over and over again. By “home,” he didn’t mean back in suburban Memphis with Margaret Ann, but on his old property in Colt, Arkansas. There, Charlie brooded in a muddy field at 3 a.m. while the rest of the group—which now included the Lebanese pizza parlor owner, Najeeb—were attacked by swarms of mosquitos. While the others ran back to the van for cover, Charlie and Najeeb built a campfire and enjoyed the stars until dawn. As the sun came up, Charlie yawped, “God, how I love this fuckin’ place!”

When they returned at dawn to the driveway of Charlie’s house, twenty-four hours later, Charlie covered in mud, Bill Williams told the writer and photographer to hide in the bushes to protect them from Margaret Ann’s wrath.”

And Also In The Same Issue, Riding with the King…
A fantastic reminiscence by Norbert Putnam, Nashville bass player and producer. Here’s a taster from that: “A few days later, I received an unusual phone call from Felton [Jarvis, Elvis’s producer]. He was wondering if I could drop by his house and assist him as he brushed the teeth of his pet boa constrictor. This was a job that very few of his friends accepted, but I was appreciative of all the work he sent my way, so I agreed to go over.” This leads on to the most extraordinary story of faking a week’s worth of overdub sessions on an Elvis album so that The King could impress his new bride, Priscilla. You have to read it to believe it…

Alanna Nash, in Vanity Fair, on a lovely photo of (possibly) Elvis at 15, in North Tupelo, published for the first time

“But it’s the location of the photo that cinches the deal. The boy in the frame stands at the intersection of North Spring and Jefferson, the epicenter of black and white Tupelo. The establishments on the west side of North Spring—a pool hall, barber shop, and military surplus store—catered to a mostly black clientele. The businesses to the east—a grocery-and-seafood market, a furniture store—served white customers. Bell, who still lives nearby, remembers many Saturdays when the block was the busiest spot in town, where some shoppers arrived from the country in horse-drawn wagons.”

Apples, Pears and Paint: How to Make a Still Life Painting
Intriguing – in places brilliant – soundtrack to this wonderfully filmed history. It seemed to take in every genre of music ever made, and I tried to contact BBC producer/director Liam McArdle to get the tracklist, but have so far failed. If anyone knows how to…

Paintings by Paul Lisak, Gallery Different, Fitzrovia…
of his bass player. Rather lovely in the flesh (my photo doesn’t do it justice) and Goyaesque – and, as it was painted by a musician, pretty accurate when it comes to the bass.