Charles Brown

Few blues performers sustained their highest level of artistry after more than five decades of live work. Charles Brown stands out immediately. His commanding keyboard command and unhurried vocal phrasing retained every ounce of their spellbinding quality at the close of his career, matching the impact they carried in 1945 when his landmark recording of “Drifting Blues” with guitarist Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers originated an entirely fresh blues style aimed at urbane postwar audiences—an especially relaxed, jazz-tinged sound ideal for savoring a late-night drink in an elegant after-hours club. Brown’s refined trio approach exerted strong influence on numerous prominent followers, starting with Ray Charles, Amos Milburn, and Floyd Dixon.

Trained in classical piano technique, Brown earned a chemistry degree before relocating to Los Angeles in 1943. He soon joined the Blazers—Moore and bassist Eddie Williams—who drew inspiration from Nat “King” Cole’s trio yet kept a stronger blues flavor inside their ballad-centered songbook. With Brown installed as vocalist and pianist, the group’s “Drifting Blues” on Philo Records stayed on Billboard’s R&B charts for twenty-three weeks and reached the number-two position. Subsequent releases on Exclusive and Modern—“Sunny Road,” “So Long,” “New Orleans Blues,” and the timeless 1947 holiday favorite “Merry Christmas Baby”—kept the Blazers near the summit of the R&B lists from 1946 through 1948, at which point Brown chose to perform alone.

On his own, Brown proved even more prosperous. Under contract with Eddie Mesner’s Aladdin imprint, he placed ten separate singles inside the R&B Top Ten between 1949 and 1952 while preserving his sparse, melancholy arrangements on such hits as “Get Yourself Another Fool,” the number-one successes “Trouble Blues” and “Black Night,” and “Hard Times.” Although he traveled to New Orleans in 1956 to cut tracks with Cosimo’s studio band, Brown’s understated method did not adapt to the bolder pulse of rock and roll, and national visibility soon declined, aside from the 1960 King label appearance of his second perennial holiday tune, “Please Come Home for Christmas.” Sporadic sessions through the 1960s and 1970s stirred little attention, yet Brown began rebuilding momentum by the mid-1980s. One More for the Road, recorded in 1986 for the short-lived Blue Side label and later reissued by Alligator, demonstrated that his abilities had not faded during his absence. Bonnie Raitt offered decisive support for his return, featuring him as her opening act and thereby exposing the veteran to successive waves of new listeners. Fresh recording opportunities followed, including several albums for Bullseye Blues—the 1990 release All My Life ranks among the most satisfying—and a later project for Verve.

During his final years Brown at last garnered a measure of the acclaim long due him as a true rhythm-and-blues trailblazer. The poised and polished pianist remained far from a museum piece, however; anyone who heard his powerful boogie-woogie keyboard attack can confirm its lasting force. He reappeared in 1998 with So Goes Love and passed away on January 21, 1999.