Charlie Rich

Charlie Rich stood out among post-World War II country performers as both one of the most widely praised and one of the most unpredictable. Possessing every quality needed to rank among the leading country figures of the 1960s and 1970s, he nonetheless found that commercial popularity lagged far behind the esteem of critics. The same attributes that secured critical favor also blocked widespread success. Across his entire career he freely mixed styles, combining country, jazz, blues, gospel, rockabilly, and soul. Although he collected 45 country hits over nearly four decades, his lasting identity rested on the polished, Billy Sherrill-produced countrypolitan sides he cut in the early 1970s. Rather than seize the stardom those recordings offered, he rejected it and withdrew into partial retirement by the 1980s.

Rich launched his professional career while serving in the U.S. Air Force in the early 1950s. Stationed in Oklahoma, he assembled the Velvetones, a jazz-and-blues ensemble that featured his fiancée, Margaret Ann, as lead singer. After leaving the military in 1956 he worked the clubs around Memphis, performing both jazz and R&B while beginning to compose his own material. He secured employment as a session musician at Judd Records, the label run by Judd Phillips, brother of Sun Records founder Sam Phillips. Saxophonist and Sun artist Bill Justis caught Rich’s playing at the Sharecropper Club and commissioned arrangements from the pianist. Sam Phillips heard Rich with Justis at a club date and invited him to cut demos at Sun Studios. Phillips dismissed the results as overly jazzy. After studying Jerry Lee Lewis records supplied by Justis, Rich returned to the label and became a regular session player in 1958, performing and singing on releases by Lewis, Johnny Cash, Justis, Warren Smith, Billy Lee Riley, Carl Mann, and Ray Smith. He also supplied songs, among them “Break Up” for Lewis, “The Ways of a Woman in Love” for Cash, and “I’m Comin’ Home” for Mann, later recorded by Elvis Presley.

In August 1958 Rich issued his debut single, “Whirlwind,” on the Sun subsidiary Phillips International. He continued recording at Sun throughout 1959, though only a few tracks saw release. His first chart success arrived in 1960 when the third Phillips International single, “Lonely Weekends,” climbed into the Top 30 on the pop listings. None of the seven follow-ups repeated that performance, yet several tracks—“Who Will the Next Fool Be?,” “Sittin’ and Thinkin’,” and “Midnight Blues”—remained fixtures of his live sets. His career stayed stalled into the early 1960s. He departed Sun in 1964 for Groove, a new RCA subsidiary. The initial Groove release, “Big Boss Man,” circulated as an underground favorite, but subsequent Chet Atkins-produced singles failed to chart. On the label Rich delivered jazzy readings of standards alongside originals such as “Tomorrow Night” and “I Don’t See Me in Your Eyes Anymore.” Groove ceased operations at the start of 1965, leaving him without a contract.

Under Shelby Singleton’s guidance, Smash Records signed Rich early in 1965. Singleton and producer Jerry Kennedy urged him to highlight his country and rock-and-roll roots. The first Smash single, “Mohair Sam,” a Dallas Frazier novelty with R&B flavor, reached the Top 30 on the pop charts, yet follow-ups made little impact. Rich next moved to Hi Records and recorded straightforward country material, none of which registered on the country charts.

Epic Records nevertheless signed him in 1967 largely on Billy Sherrill’s recommendation. Sherrill recast Rich as a smooth, Nashville-based balladeer aimed at middle-of-the-road audiences. Early singles charted modestly—“Set Me Free” and “Raggedy Ann” both reached the mid-40s in 1968—yet sustained effort paid off in summer 1972 when “I Take It on Home” rose to number six. That track paved the way for the breakthrough 1973 album Behind Closed Doors. Its title song became a number-one country hit early that year and crossed into the pop Top 20. RCA promptly reissued “Tomorrow Night,” which climbed to the Top 30, but the true star-making release was the follow-up “The Most Beautiful Girl,” which held the top country spot for three weeks and the top pop spot for two weeks. Behind Closed Doors earned three Country Music Association honors that year—Best Male Vocalist, Album of the Year, and Single of the Year for the title track—while the album itself was certified gold. Rich also received a Grammy for Best Country Vocal Performance, Male, and collected four ACM awards.

Number-one hits followed in rapid succession: “There Won’t Be Anymore” (a re-release of an RCA recording), “A Very Special Love Song,” “I Don’t See Me in Your Eyes Anymore” (also from RCA), “I Love My Friend,” and “She Called Me Baby” (RCA) all topped the country charts, with several crossing to the pop side as well. Mercury reissued earlier Smash material, and two tracks—“A Field of Yellow Daisies” and “Something Just Came Over Me”—became minor hits. The cumulative success led the CMA to name Rich Entertainer of the Year in 1974.

He did not match that dominance in 1975, yet still placed three singles in the Top Five—“My Elusive Dreams,” “Every Time You Touch Me (I Get High),” and “All Over Me”—along with the Top Ten “Since I Fell For You.” At the height of his popularity Rich began drinking heavily, creating serious off-stage difficulties. The behavior peaked at the 1975 CMA awards when, presenting Entertainer of the Year, he set fire to the certificate announcing John Denver as the winner. The incident provoked widespread outrage, and Rich struggled to land hits throughout 1976, none of his singles reaching the Top 20.

The commercial dip could not be blamed solely on personal conduct. His recordings had grown increasingly repetitive as he and Sherrill revisited the same territory first explored in 1968. Exceptions existed, notably the well-received 1976 gospel album Silver Linings, but only in 1977 did he return to the Top Ten with the number-one single “Rollin’ with the Flow.” Early in 1978 he signed with United Artists and scored hits on both Epic and UA that year. Working with producer Larry Butler, whose approach echoed Sherrill’s, Rich continued to chart on Epic; “Beautiful Woman” reached the Top Ten in summer, and the duet with Janie Fricke, “On My Knees,” became his final number-one hit that fall. “I’ll Wake You Up When I Get Home,” drawn from the Clint Eastwood film Every Which Way But Loose, peaked at number three in early 1979 and marked his last Top Ten single.

Further attempts at major hits in 1979 yielded only modest results. He moved to Elektra in 1980 and notched a number-12 single, “A Man Just Don’t Know What a Woman Goes Through,” that fall. One additional Top 40 entry, “Are We Dreamin’ the Same Dream,” appeared in early 1981, after which Rich stepped away from the spotlight. For more than a decade he remained largely inactive, living in semi-retirement and performing only occasional concerts. He re-emerged in 1992 with Pictures and Paintings, a jazz-oriented album produced by journalist Peter Guralnick and issued on Sire.

The record drew favorable notices and helped rehabilitate his standing, yet it proved to be his final release. Rich died of a pulmonary blood clot in summer 1995 while traveling to Florida with his wife, Margaret Ann. His catalog continued to reach new listeners through posthumous reissues, beginning with Legacy’s 1997 double-disc compilation Feel Like Going Home: The Essential Charlie Rich and extending into the twenty-first century with collections on Bear Family, Ace, Raven, and T-Bird Americana.