Standing six foot eight, the magnetic blues guitarist Charles Caldwell confronted an especially harsh destiny handed down by the indifferent currents of the music world. His birth occurred in 1943, after which he remained his entire life amid the north Mississippi hill country surrounding Coffeeville. Days were spent at a fan-making factory in Greneda, while weekends brought performances in local juke joints that typically yielded no greater compensation than free liquor. At the age of fourteen he acquired the hollow-body Gibson 135, the instrument he would play for the rest of his life while delivering the raw and passionate electric blues favored throughout the region. Fat Possum founder Matthew Johnson discovered him in May of 2002, by which point pancreatic cancer had already taken hold. While receiving chemotherapy for the disease, he recorded his sole album, the fiery Remember Me; the illness claimed him in September of 2003. Fat Possum released Remember Me the following year, a striking demonstration of Caldwell’s considerable talent that continues to stand as a masterpiece of modern Mississippi blues.
