Celebrating All Sides of Charlie Rich

**** CHARLIE RICH

“Feel Like Going Home:

The Essential Charlie Rich”

Epic Legacy

“I never knew a more talented musician,” Sam Phillips, the legendary founder of Sun Records, has said of Charlie Rich--a remarkable compliment from the man who also discovered Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins.

Rich turned his singing, songwriting and piano-playing talents into a string of Top 40 hits, from the rockabilly-spiked “Lonely Weekends” in 1960 to “Behind Closed Doors” and other country-tinged tunes in the ‘70s.

But much of his potential went unrecognized and unfulfilled because record companies didn’t know quite what to make of an artist who was equally adept at country, soul, rock, blues, jazz and pop.

It’s always easiest in the pop world to pigeonhole a singer so that everyone from consumers to radio programmers knows what to expect. If there were a hall of fame for simply great singers, Rich would be one of the most deserving nominees. Given that the halls are divided into musical compartments, however, it’s unlikely that he’ll ever be elected to any of them.

Like Presley, Rich grew up in the South listening to country, gospel and blues, but Rich’s mix of influences also included jazz, especially Stan Kenton and Dave Brubeck. Rich even studied musical theory for a year at the University of Arkansas before joining the Air Force.

After his discharge, he kept his musical dreams alive by occasionally playing clubs in the Memphis area, but he depended on farming for his income. By this time, he was married with two children, and a recording career seemed a long way off until his wife, Margaret Ann, took a tape of his music to Sun.

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After making his mark there by writing hits for Cash and Lewis, Rich showed in “Lonely Weekends” that he could handle himself quite nicely in a Presley-like vocal style. Rich showed so much promise, in fact, that he followed Presley to RCA Records in the early ‘60s. And after “Behind Closed Doors” (on Epic Records), he had enough drawing power to headline the same Las Vegas Hilton showroom where Presley had broken box-office records.

But Rich didn’t share Presley’s confidence or show-biz ambition. According to people who knew him, Rich was so uncomfortable in the spotlight that he all but willed himself back into semi-obscurity in the years before his death in 1995, at age 62.

With Charlie, “it wasn’t about being famous,” Margaret Ann writes in the liner notes to this two-disc retrospective. “He never cared a flip for that. In fact, he kind of ran from it.”

For all his love of jazz and his success with country and rock, Rich seemed most convincing on bluesy numbers when he could sing about the darkness and disillusionment that seemed to engulf him at times.

Though he is remarkably moving as a singer of songs by other writers (especially his wife’s “Life’s Little Ups and Downs”), one feels his artistry most profoundly when he is singing one of his own tunes, especially “Feel Like Going Home,” presented here in two versions.

There have been several Rich collections over the years that focus on his work for a single label. Here, Epic Legacy has brought together highlights from his Sun, RCA, Smash, Epic and Sire collections. Listening to these songs, you can feel and regret the compromises he made in attempting to go along with the producers to find a commercial door for himself. But you are never far away from a vocal line that speaks with the purity and passion of an artist, a hall of famer.

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