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True Believer
The unrecognized Charlie Feathers
By Randy Fox
SEPTEMBER 14, 1998:
In the months before his death on Aug. 30, Charlie Feathers seemed
poised to receive the credit he was due. It wasn't the first time
recognition seemed at hand for Feathers. But with the recent resurgence of
interest in rockabilly, and with the release of a classy two-CD Feathers
retrospective on Revenant Records, acknowledgment finally seemed at hand.
Even in periods of deep obscurity, Charlie Feathers always recognized
his importance to American music, and he didn't mind telling people. The
stories he spun often contradicted commonly held memories and facts:
Feathers himself often said that he was playing rockabilly as early as 1949
and that he taught Elvis how to sing rockabilly. As a result, some people
characterized him as a nut, a could-have-been--a musical eccentric who
sought to disguise his lack of success with inflated tales. But whatever
his reputation, his music speaks for itself.
Like the army of poor, white, Southern boys that revolutionized American
music in the '50s, Charlie Feathers was born into a world of poverty so
severe that it made little differentiation between white and black. Born
near Slayden, Miss., in 1932, Feathers left school after the third grade to
work in cotton fields and at other hard labor. He learned to play guitar
from bluesman Junior Kimbrough, but his first musical hero was Bill Monroe,
followed soon by Hank Williams. All of these influences, and others,
eventually shaped Feathers' style.
By 1949, Feathers was living in Memphis, and he began hanging around the
Sun Studio shortly after it opened in the early '50s--recording demos,
working on arrangements, and cowriting songs, including "I Forgot to
Remember to Forget," Elvis' last Sun single. In 1954 and 1955, Feathers
recorded a handful of powerful, soulful hillbilly songs for Sun--songs that
caused Sam Phillips to refer to him as "the first great country singer I
ever cut and probably the best."
But Feathers' heart, it seemed, lay in rockabilly. In 1956, the singer
had two rockabilly songs he was itching to record. Although Phillips
refused to release any rockabilly sides by Feathers, Lester Bihari at
Meteor Records, Sun's main competition in Memphis, was more than happy to.
The resulting single, "Tongue-Tied Jill," backed with "Get With It," became
the singer's first classic rockabilly release. The record didn't gain much
exposure outside Memphis, but it led to a deal with King Records in
Cincinnati.
The four singles Feathers recorded for King in '56 and '57 sold few
copies, but they are some of the purest, most unadulterated rock 'n' roll
ever recorded. At heart, rockabilly wasn't clean, fun music--it was a
mutant hybrid of the hot hillbilly boogie and over-the-top rhythm and blues
of the late '40s and early '50s. It was midwifed not by the teen scene, but
by young, hotshot crackers in honky-tonks and dives all over the South. A
case in point is the King side "Bottle to the Baby," on which Charlie
Feathers sang frantically about having to feed his infant before a night of
carousing.
As the popularity of rockabilly faded and most of its early proponents
moved toward pop or mainstream country, Charlie Feathers kept the spark
alive--recording a handful of singles on obscure labels and slugging it out
in the honky-tonks of Memphis. When the first rockabilly revival began to
stir in the '70s, Charlie Feathers didn't have to return to the music: He'd
been standing his ground for years.
The recordings Charlie Feathers left behind--studio, live, and dozens of
home demos--reveal a soulful passion and a stubborn adherence to his
distinct musical voice. This single-mindedness may have denied him wealth
or success, but it's also what made him such a great performer.
Over the years, Feathers would receive smatterings of recognition. He
was featured in Peter Guralnick's 1979 book Lost Highway, and his
belated major-label debut came in 1990 as part of Elektra/Nonesuch's
American Explorers series. Yet even as he became recognized and hailed as
an American original, his reputation for eccentricity and spinning tales
continued to eclipse his music.
One of the best Charlie Feathers stories dates back to 1974: On his
first trip to the West Coast, he recorded a single for Rockin' Ronnie
Weiser's Rollin' Rock label. After spending most of the day working on one
song, Weiser reminded Feathers that they needed another song and asked for
something a little hotter. Feathers promptly grabbed a bass and slapped out
"That Certain Female," three minutes of powerful, unrestrained, rockabilly
madness--illustrating just how simple it could be for him to produce a
classic.
It's doubtful that all of the stories Charlie Feathers told about
himself were true. But regardless of their veracity, they remind us that
the truth may not always be as simple as we believe it to be. The history
of American music has largely chosen to ignore Charlie Feathers'
accomplishments, but the fact that Charlie Feathers lived that history
cannot be denied.

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