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By 1955, Charlie was back in Eastern Arkansas. During the day, he farmed 500 acres near Forrest City. By late night, he was fast becoming a prominent fixture on the Memphis jazz scene, where he’d play with a 5-piece jazz group in smoky nightclubs until the sun began to rise above the fields that needed tending. |
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Jazz fans may not be aware of it, but Charlie spent the next three and a half decades in various recording studios, dabbling in this style and that one, often achieving staggering success. But what others wanted him to record typically didn’t match Charlie’s own recording desires: Charlie wanted to record a jazz album. Not like the Miles Davis or Duke Ellington recordings that were among his favorites, but one that captured his own, genre-bending style. His life-long dream came true in 1992. For years, Charlie had sustained himself with countless hours of solo improvizations and weekly jam sessions with the best local jazz cats (folks like Fred Ford and Michael Toles)—all within the confines of his personal home studio. Then, the opportunity of a life time presented itself with a recording date at Phillips Recording Studio. Charlie would be given free rein. What he did was allow his jazz soul to come up for air. Pictures and Paintings embodies the very essence of Charlie: pensive, haunting, sad, moody, joyful, yearning, and altogether brilliant. "This is a music of transformations," notes critic Peter Guralnick. "Every one of the songs is beautifully played, but fundamentally each depends upon almost naked expressions of emotion, combining joy and melancholy in an expressive setting that resonates with both triumph and pain." It’s fitting that jazz cat Charlie’s final album gives us so much Charlie and so much jazz. Cool. |
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