DISC 1: [13] Old And Only In The Way MP3 [14] Don't Let Your Deal Go Down MP3 [23] Milwaukee Blues MP3 DISC 2: [01] Girl I Left In Sunny Tennessee MP3 [02] Sunny Tennessee MP3 [04] Moving Day MP3 [05] It's Movin' Day MP3 DISC 3: [01] If I Lose, I Don't Care MP3	cover art by Robert Crumb
"...an indispensable new three-disc set ....This is music that has lost none of its power to confound or to thrill." Kelefa Sanneh, NEW YORK TIMES "...hillbilly chamber music...a quintessentially American mix of rawness and elegance." David Gates, NEWSWEEK "'You Ain't Talkin' To Me' is long overdue. Go ahead and mark this one down for a Grammy." John Paul Keith, PERFORMING SONGWRITER "Listening to Poole is exciting the same way listening to Kid Ory's primordial New Orleans jazz is exciting. Stamped into the shellac of those old 78s is the sound of a new music being born, a visionary clawing his way out of the old Victorian songbooks, crazy enough to poke at the edges of the known world...."   Charles Homans, FADER "Lord knows Charlie Poole deserves a box set....he and the Ramblers helped transform country from traditional songs in the oral tradition into commercial, recorded country music." John Morthland, NO DEPRESSION AVAILABLE TUESDAY, MAY 17TH on Columbia/Legacy a division of SONY BMG ENTERTAINMENT List price $39.98 CHARLIE POOLE was a hard-driving, hard-drinking Depression-era character--mill-worker, bootlegger, scalawag--who lived fast and died young at age 39. Amid the hijinks and low-life, though, Poole left his indelible mark on a century of music, from Uncle Dave Macon, Roy Acuff, Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams to Earl Scruggs and Don Reno, from Woody Guthrie and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott to the New Lost City Ramblers and Bob Dylan, and from the Holy Modal Rounders, Jerry Garcia and his group whose name draws from a Poole song (Old & In The Way) to John Mellencamp and today’s generation of alt-country rockers who are embarking on their own rediscovery of Charlie Poole. What Robert Johnson was to blues and rock’n’roll, Charlie Poole was to bluegrass, folk, and modern country music. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: JANUARY 13, 2005 YOU AIN’T TALKIN’ TO ME: CHARLIE POOLE AND THE ROOTS OF COUNTRY MUSIC 3 CDs, 72 TRACKS – FIRST BOX SET EVER COMPILED ON MUSIC, INFLUENCES, AND FOLLOWERS OF "THE PATRON SAINT OF MODERN COUNTRY MUSIC" HARD-LIVING BANJOIST, SINGER, INNOVATOR DIED 1931 AT AGE 39 – SET THE STAGE FOR JIMMIE RODGERS AND HANK WILLIAMS Disc One: Charlie Poole With the North Carolina Ramblers, Columbia recordings from July 1925 to September 1930, including "Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down," "White House Blues," "Take a Drink On Me," "Old And Only In the Way" Discs Two & Three: Multi-artists featured, Poole’s songs contrasted A/B-style with early influences and those who followed, including "Sunny Tennessee," "Good-Bye Booze," "Can I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight Mister," "You Ain’t Talkin’ To Me," "Coon From Tennessee," "Sweet Sunny South," "He Rambled" Historic box set compiled, produced and annotated by Poole Grammy nominated producer Henry "Hank" Sapoznik arrives in stores May 10, 2005, on Columbia/Legacy – preceding 10th annual Charlie Poole Festival in Eden, NC, May 20-21st, and 80th anniversary of first recording session in July 1925 "[Izzy Young of the Folklore Center] played me ‘White House Blues’ by Charlie Poole and said that this would be perfect for me and pointed out that this was the exact version that the [New Lost City] Ramblers did." --Bob Dylan, Chronicles Volume One Charlie Poole – a bodacious itinerant musician who transcended his Piedmont roots as he drifted around the sweet sunny South with his North Carolina Ramblers. But if his only claim to fame was playing barn dances, harvest balls, radio programs, and men’s club smokers – not to mention street corners for spare change, or as "shills" at fiddle contests they won handily – his colorful yet star-crossed life might never have passed into the realm of legend. Charlie Poole – the first singer to integrate his hard times into his repertoire, thereby synthesizing the DNA of bluegrass and modern country music. But if his only contribution was inadvertently (because of a crippling baseball accident) developing a unique three-finger guitar style of banjo picking that suited his knife-edged vocals and ironic lyrical twists of folklore – his career might still have been little more than a footnote in American music history. Charlie Poole – who made household tunes out of "Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down," "White House Blues," "Take a Drink On Me," "Hungry Hash House," "I’m the Man Who Rode the Mule ‘Round the World," "Ramblin’ Blues," "Flop Eared Mule," and "Can I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight Mister." Yet if the only success that can be laid to rest at his feet is the passage of those songs and a couple dozen others into the American songbook, he might not have become a near-religious icon of bluegrass, folk and country music. In fact, Charlie Poole did all of these things and that is why his name is spoken with such reverence by true believers. He was a hard-driving, hard-drinking Depression-era character – mill-worker, bootlegger, scalawag – who lived fast and died young, at age 39. In the process, Poole left his mark on a century of musicians from Uncle Dave Macon, Roy Acuff, Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams to Earl Scruggs and Don Reno, from Woody Guthrie and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott to the New Lost City Ramblers and Bob Dylan, from the Holy Modal Rounders, Jerry Garcia and the group whose name paraphrases a Poole song – Old & In the Way – to John Mellencamp and today’s generation of alt-country rockers who are embarking on their own rediscovery of Charlie Poole. What Robert Johnson was to blues and rock and roll, Charlie Poole was to bluegrass, folk, and modern country music. The man who is rightly called the patron saint of C&W spent virtually his entire recording career – from July 1925 to September 1930 – as a Columbia artist. For the first time since the onset of the digital era, a deluxe 3-CD box set finally puts his life and music in historic perspective, as YOU AIN’T TALKIN’ TO ME: CHARLIE POOLE AND THE ROOTS OF COUNTRY MUSIC, arrives in stores May 10, 2005, on Columbia/Legacy, a division of SONY BMG Music Entertainment. The release precedes the 10th annual get-together on May 20-21st of "The Charlie Poole Festival" in Poole’s old hometown of Eden, North Carolina, and anticipates the upcoming 80th anniversary of Poole’s first Columbia recording date in New York City. Over the course of 3 CDs and 72 tracks (clocking in with more than 222 minutes of music), YOU AIN’T TALKIN’ TO ME presents the music of Charlie Poole in four distinct contexts. First, there are the timeless Columbia sides, as 40 of the near-70 tunes recorded by Charlie Poole & the North Carolina Ramblers are collected here (along with three others from 1929, in a slightly expanded lineup under the pseudonyms of the Highlanders for Paramount, and the Allegheny Highlanders for Brunswick). The remaining 29 tracks explore three facets in which a wide range of Poole’s contemporaries (and a handful of his predecessors) are featured on several other record labels: Earlier singers and groups from whom he borrowed material on which to apply his unique stamp (ranging from Victorian ballads and Tin Pan Alley pop, to coon songs and country blues); banjoists who exerted a significant influence on Poole’s innovative instrumental style (or from whom he also merely borrowed material); and banjoists, singers and groups who were influenced by Poole during his reign, and who helped incorporate his progressive ideas into the evolution of hillbilly music. These tracks are drawn from 78s and cylinder recordings originally made for the Bluebird, Busy Bee, Edison, Gennett, Little Wonder, Okeh, Victor, and Vocalion labels. Transferred from rare original 78s by Grammy Award winning sound engineer Christopher King (for the Charlie Patton box set in 2003), these are the first digital transfers of many of these sides, and bring out a sound quality even Poole’s most ardent fans have never before heard. YOU AIN’T TALKIN’ TO ME was compiled and produced for reissue by Henry Sapoznik, who brings to the project his expertise as a professional musician (adept at banjo and guitar) in the old time and klezmer fields. As an award-winning author, producer, archivist, historian and radio producer he also wrote the definitive 6,000 word liner note essay that completes the package. Additionally, Sapoznik commissioned noted illustrator R. Crumb to create the cover art for the box set. "Charlie Poole (1892-1931) was the prototypical rough-and-tumble, hard-living – and prematurely dying – country performer," Sapoznik writes. "Like Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams, he sang his life, and his fans idolized him for it. But the recordings collected here reveal something far more profound: Charlie Poole’s role as the patron saint of modern country music." To that end, YOU AIN’T TALKIN’ TO ME kicks into high gear on disc one with 24 Poole gems covering the entire time frame of his recordings, from the first session of July 27, 1925 (which included "Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down") through Poole’s final session on September 9, 1930 (with the sentimental "Mother’s Last Farewell Kiss," which remained an unissued treasure until the 1970s). Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers – the original lineup with fiddler Posey Rorer (whose sister Lou Emma wed Poole in 1920) and guitarist Norman Woodlieff – were brought to Columbia by A&R man-producer Frank Walker for a fee of $75. "And to everyone’s amazement," Sapoznik writes, "‘Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blues’ flip-sided by ‘Can I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight Mister’ sold 102,000 copies, a stunning number at a time when 20,000 was a runaway success in any genre and when there were some 600,000 record players throughout the Southern states, putting this record on one out of six phonographs." From the same 1925 session, "I’m the Man Who Rode the Mule ‘Round the World" b/w "The Girl I Left in Sunny Tennessee" quickly followed as the next record and sold over 65,000 copies, establishing Poole’s hierarchy. By the time Walker enticed Poole back to New York in September 1926 for a higher fee and higher royalties, guitarist Roy Harvey had taken over for an ailing Woodlieff. The session yielded two more successful records: "White House Blues" (which became a staple for Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, legions of folk singers, and most recently John Mellencamp) b/w "Monkey on a String"; and "Good-Bye Booze" b/w "Budded Rose." Walker’s groundbreaking success with Charlie Poole in 1925-26 not only predated but many say instigated (or at least set the stage) for Ralph Peer’s legendary Bristol (Va.) Sessions for the Victor Talking Machine Company a year later – which marked the discovery of Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family, the Stonemans, Blind Alfred Reed and others in August 1927. "By all reports," Sapoznik writes, "a Charlie Poole show was something to see. Punctuating sly twists on familiar songs with his rat-a-tat picking style, Poole would leap over chairs, turn cartwheels, clog dance on his hands, and shake up audiences with repertoire that was just as surprising. Typical sets would careen from prim, cautionary heart songs to a ditty usually reserved for bawdy house anterooms to fiddle tunes to over-the-top dramatizations, [and] versions of popular songs, before drawing to a close with a contemplative hymn." Among the other treasures to be found on disc one are "Shootin’ Creek" (first known as "Cripple Creek," a folk music essential for Buffy Ste. Marie and many others); "Leaving Home" (Poole’s take on the Broadway jazzbo version of "Frankie & Johnny"); "White House Blues" (the first commercial recording of the ballad that commemorated President McKinley’s assassination in 1901); "Take a Drink On Me" (adapted from the cocaine ditty "Take a Whiff On Me," rediscovered by the Holy Modal Rounders); "Bill Mason" (a train engineer tune based on Bret Harte’s poem); "Took My Gal A-Walkin’" (whose chorus lifts Broadway’s "I Ain’t Got Nobody"); and "If the River Was Whiskey" (which Rev. Gary Davis, Dave Van Ronk, and Hot Tuna taught to millions as "Hesitation Blues," based on W.C. Handy’s "Hesitating Blues"). After presenting a full CD of Poole classics on disc one, the producer utilizes the next two CDs to interweave Poole’s music with others, a documentary-style approach to assessing Poole’s place in music lore. Sapoznik first used this format in 2002, on the critically acclaimed 2-CD multi-artist collection From Avenue A To the Great White Way (Columbia/Legacy). Part of that set A/B-ed original Yiddish hits with the pop hits into which they morphed, for example "Der Shtiller Bulgar" and "And the Angels Sing." The same juxtaposition is used to maximum effect on YOU AIN’T TALKIN’ TO ME. Disc two introduces the idea with Poole’s "The Girl I Left in Sunny Tennessee" followed by the Floyd County Rambler’s re-recording of the song five years later on Victor (as "Sunny Tennessee"), and then backtracked to "Bulldog Down in Sunny Tennessee," a parody by fellow Columbia group Dock Walsh and the Carolina Tar Heels (the North Carolina Ramblers’ biggest Piedmont rivals), recorded in October 1925, less than three months after Poole’s original. At least a half-dozen more sequences underscore the influence that Charlie Poole was exerting on his peers from the minute he appeared on the scene. From the first 1925 session, "I’m the Man Who Rode the Mule ‘Round the World" was the basis for Uncle Dave Macon’s "Man That Rode the Mule ‘Round the World" in 1929 (better known as "I Was Born About 10,000 Years Ago," a song whose lineage is traced from Kelly Harrell and Pete Seeger to Elvis Presley). Also from the first 1925 session, "Can I Sleep In Your Barn Tonight Mister" is matched with the re-recording by the Red Fox Chasers in 1928, "May I Sleep In Your Barn Tonight Mister." In 1926, fellow Columbia artist Gid Tanner heard Poole’s version of "Good-Bye Booze," the Temperance-era coon song, and got the jump on Poole by recording it first (the melody is immediately recognizable as "My Creole Belle" by Mississippi John Hurt, who made his first recordings in 1928). And less than a month after Poole recorded "If I Lose, I Don’t Care" in July 1927, a nearly identical song was cut by Red Patterson’s Piedmont Log Rollers as "Battleship Of Maine" (although the Stanley Brothers in the ’60s and Norman Blake in the ’80s retained Poole’s version). In between these A/B vocal sequences are various instrumental tracks that expand the Poole saga. His role model on the banjo was the virtuoso Fred Van Eps, and it is fascinating to contrast both sides of his landmark Edison record of 1911, "The Infanta March" b/w "Dixie Medley" with the Poole sides they inspired, 1927’s "Sunset March" and 1930’s "Southern Medley," respectively. Similarly, three-finger/clawhammer banjoist (and noted fiddler) Frank Jenkins is featured on 1927’s "Home Sweet Home," a song that later showcased blind banjoist Mack Woolbright that same year ("The Man Who Wrote ‘Home Sweet Home’ Never Was a Married Man"). Jenkins played banjo on DaCosta Woltz’s Southern Broadcasters recording of "(Take Me Back To the) Sweet Sunny South" in 1927, which Poole got around to in 1929. Uncle Dave Macon (1926’s "Uncle Dave’s Beloved Solo") and vaudevillian Sam Moore ("Dixie Medley" of 1924) also played a role in the banjo’s evolution toward bluegrass. The proliferation of coon songs between the wars, a holdover from the Minstrel Show era of the 19th and early 20th centuries, is recalled on Arthur Collins’ 1906 recording of "Moving Day" (the eternal landlord-tenant eviction woes) which segues into Poole’s 1930 version, titled "It’s Movin’ Day." "When Poole croons, ‘She’s mah honey from the honeycomb’," Sapoznik writes, "you can believe that he sat through the 1927 Al Jolson movie The Jazz Singer a half dozen times." Philadelphia policeman Eddie Morton’s "You Ain’t Talking To Me" of 1909, with its orchestral backing, lost its coon song flavor when it was re-recorded 18 years later by Poole. Interestingly, Poole’s final recording session in September 1930 found him (or his A&R man) turning to the coon song repertoire two last times. For reference, "Goodbye Sweet Liza Jane" (written by the same duo of Sterling & Von Tilzer who penned "Moving Day") is preceded by the Peerless Quartet’s original 1912 version; and "Just You Keep Waiting Till the Good Time Comes" is preceded by Irish superstar Billy Murray’s 1911 original version on Edison, titled "Baby Rose." "The tracks from his final session are bright, crisp and full of the kind of energy Poole manufactured deep within himself," Sapoznik writes. Nevertheless, the Depression was taking its toll as record sales diminished and audience attendance plummeted. Just before the September 1930 session, Poole was forced to sell his prized Gibson Mastertone banjo. He borrowed another banjo from a friend to make the session in New York, only to wind up pawning it during a drunken spree. In a final act worthy of Greek tragedy, Poole received an offer from Hollywood in 1931, to provide music for a film. Looking forward to the trip, he went on a suicidal 12-week drinking bender. Found staggering through town, he was carried to his sister’s home. "Old Charlie’s been drunk a lot of times," he prophesied, "but this time old Charlie’s gonna kick the bucket." His nephew found him the next morning, jaundiced and cold. "Muh, Muh," the boy cried, "Uncle Charles is deader than hell!" Charlie Poole was 39 years old. "Much as the early black bandleader James Reese Europe bridged string-based ragtime and jazz," notes Sapoznik, "Poole layered a driving yet distilled sound onto the string band model he grew up with to take old-time music someplace new. At the center of it all was his banjo, the heartbeat of the band. He played it like no one else" Eight decades after his historic first recording session in 1925, Charlie Poole’s music continues to find passionate fans around the world. And there’s no reason to think it won’t continue for another eight."
YOU AIN’T TALKIN’ TO ME: CHARLIE POOLE AND THE ROOTS OF COUNTRY MUSIC (Columbia/Legacy C3K 92780) Disc 1 Shootin’ Creek Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Lonnie Austin: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15286-D 146779-2 New York, 7/23/28 Baltimore Fire Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Posey Rorer: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15509-D 148472-1 New York, 5/6/29 Leaving Home Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Posey Rorer: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15516-D 142645-2 New York, 9/18/26 There’ll Come a Time Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Posey Rorer: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15516-D 142657-3 New York 9/20/26 White House Blues Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Posey Rorer: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15099-D 142658-2 New York, 9/20/26 6.The Highwayman Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Posey Rorer: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15160-D 142659-2 New York, 9/20/26 Hungry Hash House Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Posey Rorer: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15160-D 142660-1 New York 9/20/26 The Letter That Never Came Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Posey Rorer: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15179-D 144514-3 New York, 7/25/27 Take A Drink On Me Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Posey Rorer: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15193-D 144515-1 New York, 7/25/27 10.Husband and Wife Were Angry One Night Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Lonnie Austin: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15342-D 146771-2 New York, 7/23/28 Ramblin’ Blues Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Lonnie Austin: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15286-D 146773-1 New York 7/23/28 12. Took My Gal A-Walkin’ Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Lonnie Austin: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15672-D 146774-2 New York, 7/23/28 13..Old and Only In the Way Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Lonnie Austin: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15672-D 146778-1 New York, 7/23/28 14.Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blues Charlie Poole accompanied by the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Posey Rorer: fdl Norman Woodlief: gtr Columbia CO 15038-D 140789-1 New York, 7/27/25 15. Bill Mason Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Lonnie Austin: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15407-D 148469-3 New York, 5/6/29 A Kiss Waltz The North Carolina Ramblers Led by Posey Rorer Posey Rorer: fdl Charlie Poole: bjo, Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia unissued 142644-1 New York, 9/18/26-D Flop Eared Mule The Highlanders Charlie Poole: bjo Odell Smith: fdl Lonnie Austin-fdl Lucy Terry: pno Roy Harvey: gtr Paramount PM 3171 2911-2 New York, 5/9/29 A Trip to New York Part 1 Allegheny Highlanders Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Odell Smith: fdl Lonnie Austin-fdl Lucy Terry: pno Roy Harvey: gtr, vcl Brunswick BR 324 E-29798- New York 5/11/29 Sweet Sixteen Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Odell Smith: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15519-D 149900-1 New York 1/23/30 Write a Letter to My Mother Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Odell Smith: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15711-D 149904-2 New York 1/23/30 If the River Was Whiskey Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Odell Smith: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15545-D 149906-1 New York 1/23/30 Mother’s Last Farewell Kiss Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: vcl Odell Smith: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia unissued 150778-2 New York 9/9/30 Milwaukee Blues Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Odell Smith: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15688-D 150779-2 New York 9/9/30 24. Where the Whippoorwill is Whispering Good-night Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: vcl Odell Smith: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15636-D 150780-2 New York 9/9/30 DISC 2 The Girl I Left in Sunny Tennessee Charlie Poole accompanied by the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Posey Rorer: fdl Norman Woodlief: gtr Columbia CO 15043-D 140786-1 New York, 7/27/25 Sunny Tennessee Floyd County Ramblers Banks McNeil, fdl Walter Boone-hrm/har vcl Sam McNeil: bjo J.W. (Will) Boone: g/lead vcl Victor VI-40307 63612-2 New York 8/29/30 The Bulldog Down in Sunny Tennessee "Dock" Walsh bjo/vcl Columbia CO 15047-D 141096-1 Atlanta, GA 10/3/25 Moving Day Arthur Collins, vcl with Orchestra Busy Bee BB A102 New York 1906 5. It’s Movin’ Day Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Odell Smith: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15545-D 149907-1 New York 1/23/30 Home Sweet, Home Frank Jenkins: bjo Gennett GE 6165 12773 Richmond, IN 5/27 I’m the Man That Rode the Mule ‘Round the World Charlie Poole accompanied by the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Posey Rorer: fdl Norman Woodlief: gtr Columbia CO 15043-D 140787-1 New York, 7/27/25 Man That Rode the Mule Around the World Uncle Dave Macon: bjo, vcl Sid Harkreader: gtr, vcl Vocalion VO 5356 C-3660- Chicago, IL 6/20/29 Lynchburg Town The Highlanders Charlie Poole: bjo Odell Smith: fdl Lonnie Austin-fdl Lucy Terry: pno Roy Harvey: gtr Paramount PM 3171 2912-1 New York, 5/9/29 10.Going Down to Lynchburg Town –Intro Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blue Ridge Highballers Charley LaPrade: fdl Arthur Wells: bjo Lonnie Griffith: g Columbia CO 15096-D 141856-1 New York 3/24/26 11.Some One Branch and Coleman Bernice Coleman: fdl, vcl Ernest Branch: bjo, vcl Roy Harvey: gtr OKeh 45568 405035-1 Atlanta, GA 10/27/31 Monkey on a String Cal Stewart, vcl with orchestra Victor Vi 5144 B-4448-2 New York 4/30/07 Monkey on a String Charlie Poole accompanied by the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Posey Rorer: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15099-D 142638-1 New York 9/17/26 Can I Sleep In Your Barn Tonight Mister Charlie Poole accompanied by the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Posey Rorer: fdl Norman Woodlief: gtr Columbia CO 15038-D 140788-2 New York, 7/27/25 15. May I Sleep In Your Barn Tonight, Mister Paul Miles and The Red Fox Chasers Guy Brooks: fdl/vcl Bob Cranford: h/vcl Paul Miles: bjo A.P. Thompson: g/vcl Gennett GE 6547 13945 Richmond, IN 6/29/28 Married Life Blues Byron Parker and His Mountaineers Homer Sherrill: fdl Leonard Stokes: gtr/vcl DeWitt "Snuffy" Jenkins: bjo Clyde Robbins: gtr Bluebird BB B 8708 056503-1 Atlanta, GA 10/10/40 The Infanta March Fred Van Eps with Orchestra Fred Van Eps: bjo Edison 50195 New York 10/11 Sunset March Charlie Poole: bjo Lucy Terry: pno Columbia CO 15184-D 144518-1 New York 7/26/27 I’ll Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms Buster Carter and Preston Young Posey Rorer: fdl Buster Carter: bjo/ lead vcl Preston Young: gtr/har vcl Columbia CO 15690-D 151651-1 New York 6/26/31 Goodbye Eliza Jane Peerless Quartet with orchestra Possibly: Arthur Collins Frank C. Stanley Henry Burr Byron G. Harlan Little Wonder LW 343 New York 1912 Good-bye Sweet Liza Jane Charlie Poole accompanied by the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: vcl Odell Smith: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15601=D 150773-1 New York 9/9/30 Good-Bye Booze Charlie Poole accompanied by the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Posey Rorer: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15138-D 142637-1 New York, 9/17/26 Goodbye Booze Gid Tanner and Faith (sic) Norris Gid Tanner: fdl, vcl Fate Norris: gtr/vcl Columbia CO 15105-D 142063-1 Atlanta, GA 4/20/26 24.You Ain’t Talking To Me Eddie Morton, vcl with Orchestra Columbia CO A777 4271-4 New York 12/09 25.You Ain’t Talkin’ to Me- Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Posey Rorer: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15193-D 144511-1 New York, 7/25/27 CD 3 If I Lose, I Don’t Care Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Posey Rorer: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15215-D 144509-1 New York 7/25/27 2. The Battleship of Maine Red Patterson's Piedmont Log Rollers Percy Setliff: fiddle John Fletcher "Red" Patterson: banjo/vocal Dick Nolen, tenor banjo Lee Nolen: guitar Victor 20936 39803-2 Friday August 12, 1927 Budded Rose Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Posey Rorer: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15138-D 142646-1 New York, 9/18/26 Standing By a Window Clay Everhart and the North Carolina Cooper Boys Robert Dewey Cooper: fdl Henry Clay Everhart: bjo, vcl Thomas Franklin Cooper: gtr Unidentified, vcl Columbia 15737-D 151950-1 Atlanta, GA 10/27/31 Uncle Dave’s Beloved Solo Uncle Dave Macon: bjo, vcl Vocalion Vo 15439 E-3688/89 New York 9/8/26 Come Take a Trip in My Airship Billy Murray vcl w/ Orchestra Edison ED 8874 New York 1/05 I Once Loved a Sailor Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Lonnie Austin: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15385-D 146770-2 New York, 7/23/28 Dixie Medley from "Spooning and Ballooning" Moore and Freed Sam Moore: bjo, har Carl Freed: pno Vocalion Vo B14865 E13479 New York 8/1924 My Wife, She Has Gone And Left Me Kelly Harrell (Virginia String Band) Kelly Harrell: vcl Posey Rorer: fdl R.D. Hundley: bjo Alfred Steagel: gtr Victor Vi 21520 38239-2 Camden, NJ 3/23/27 10.My Wife Went Away and Left Me Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Lonnie Austin: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15584-D 146768-2 New York, 7/23/28 11.Baby Rose Billy Murray with Orchestra Billy Murray: vcl Edison ED 719 New York 6/1911 12. Just Keep Waiting Till the Good Time Comes Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: vcl Odell Smith: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15636 150777-2 New York 9/9/30 13. Shuffle Feet, Shuffle Whitter-Hendley-Small Fisher Hendley: bjo Marshall Small: bjo Henry Whitter: gtr Victor VI 23528 64748-1 Memphis, TN 11/29/30 14.Coon From Tennessee Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Posey Rorer: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15215-D 144512-2 New York, 7/25/27 Coon From Tennessee Georgia Crackers Paul Cofer, fdl, vcl Leon Cofer: bjo/vcl Ben Evans: gtr/vcl OKeh 45098 80595-B Atlanta, GA 3/21/27 On the Banks Of The Kaney Big Chief Henry’s Indian String Band Henry Hall: fdl Harold Hall: bjo Clarence Hall: gtr Victor VI 40195 56387-1 Dallas. TX 10/15/29 Dixie Medley Fred Van Eps, banjo with Orchestra Edison 50195 New York 10/11 Southern Medley Charlie Poole: bjo Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15615-D 149908-1 New York 1/23/30 The Man Who Wrote Home Sweet Home Never Was a Married Man Charlie Parker and Mack Woolbright Charlie Parker: bjo/vcl Mack Woolbright: gtr/vcl Columbia CO 15236-D 145194-1 Atlanta, GA 11/10/27 Sweet Sunny South Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Posey Rorer: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15425-D 148475-2 New York 5/6/29 21. Take Me Back to the Sweet Sunny South DaCosta Woltz’s Southern Broadcasters DaCosta Woltz: bjo Frank Jenkins: bjo Ben Jarrell: fdl, vcl Gennett 6176 12779 Richmond, IN 5/1927 Oh! Didn’t He Ramble Arthur Collins, vcl w/ Orchestra Edison 8081 New York 8/1902 He Rambled Charlie Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers Charlie Poole: bjo, vcl Lonnie Austin: fdl Roy Harvey: gtr Columbia CO 15407-D 148476-2 New York, 5/6/29 Charlie Poole (1892–1931) was the prototypical rough-and-tumble, hard-living—and prematurely dying—country performer. Like Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams, he sang his life, and his fans idolized him for it. But the recordings you are about to hear reveal something far more profound: Poole’s role as the patron saint of modern country music. Much as the early black bandleader James Reese Europe bridged string-based ragtime and jazz, Poole took old-time music someplace new. Layering a driving yet distilled sound onto the string band model he grew up with, Poole’s vision joined the kinetic energy of a barn dance with the meticulous voicing of a chamber ensemble. At the epicenter was the dynamic, insistent metronome of his banjo, the heartbeat of the band. He played like no one else. Early on Poole had damaged his right hand in a drunken wager that he could catch a baseball without a glove no matter how hard it was thrown. He lost the bet. When he closed his hand too quickly the baseball broke his fingers, permanently arching them. But like another musical progenitor, the Belgian gypsy musician Django Reinhart, who transcended the constraints of a badly burned left hand to create a dazzling jazz guitar style, Poole spun gain from loss. Together with his center-stage vocals and nuanced arrangements, Poole’s treatment of three-finger banjo picking came to contain the critical DNA for bluegrass, the branch of mountain music he inspired but did not live to see. And his lean "treble tone" voice, a sound treasured in pre-microphone days, sliced through the instrumentation and lyrics he finessed to support it. Although he wrote no songs per se, Poole personalized every one—dropping a verse here, altering a melody there, and nearly always changing the title. He gravitated to songs that echoed his life or baldly contrasted it, marking them with tantalizing bits of autobiography that made for a compelling story then and now. In his progression from mill hand to moonshiner to fiddle-contest shill, Poole found his calling as the leader of a band whose name said it all: the North Carolina Ramblers. Poole and pals were inveterate wanderers who would impetuously leave home for weeks at a time. They’d roam the region, playing for spare change at dances, schoolhouse concerts, in general stores or on street corners. By all reports, a Poole show was something to see. Punctuating sly twists on familiar songs with his rat-a-tat picking style, he would leap over chairs, turn cartwheels, clog dance on his hands, and shake up audiences with repertoire every bit as surprising. Typical sets would careen from prim, cautionary heart songs to a ditty usually reserved for bawdy house anterooms to fiddle tunes to over-the-top renditions of popular songs, before drawing to a close with a contemplative hymn. Poole had other ways of stopping the show. He would shout down audience members who interrupted the band: "Did you people come here to talk or to listen"" Barely literate, Poole was nonetheless wickedly articulate. Locals knew better than to try matching wits with a man they said could insult a statue. ("I thought a damn polecat was the only thing that throwed a scent," Poole once told a man who put a penny in the musicians’ kitty.) Although he had a preference for slicked-down haircuts ending inches above his jug handle ears, accentuating his eager, boyish appearance, Poole never played up the country bumpkin look. No hayseed he. Pictures of the North Carolina Ramblers always show them in dressy dark suits, sporting natty bow ties and looking for all the world like Rotarians with instruments. Poole was no civic model, however. Fiddler Posey Rorer’s grandnephew Kinney tells of the time Poole was playing a gin mill that was raided by police: "One of the officers nabbed Poole. ‘Consider yourself under arrest,’ he told him. Never having been one to run from a fight, Poole replied, ‘Consider, hell!’ and came down across the officer’s head with his banjo, the instrument neck hanging down his front like a necktie. Another policeman pulled a revolver on Poole, who grabbed it as the two wrestled across the floor. The officer managed to get the barrel of the pistol in Charlie’s ear but as he pulled the trigger to kill him, Poole shoved the gun away so that it went off near his mouth. The explosion chipped his front teeth and left his lips bloodied and badly burned." Charlie Poole was "Outlaw Country" fifty years before the term existed. But it’s too easy to allow these fantastic stories to overwhelm the simple reality of his musical genius. Let the needle slip into the groove of a Poole 78 and that genius becomes clear fast. While local folklore underscores his reputation as a hard-drinking hell-raiser and rover, all was forgiven when he played his banjo and sang. Charles Cleveland Poole was born on March 22, 1892, in Randolph County, North Carolina. His father, John, was a migrant laborer who followed the trail of regional and seasonal millwork, a capricious existence that doubtless inspired Charlie Poole’s own rambling nature. Set to factory work at an early age, Poole did not learn to read and write until his twenties. Of eight brothers and a sister he was the only one to show true passion for music. The passion turned professional at age twenty-six, when, after a brief, failed first marriage, he followed his sister north to the textile factories of Spray, North Carolina. At the turn of the last century, the mill towns of Spray, Leaksville, and Draper—since incorporated as Eden—were a hotbed of music and of musicians. Adding to an already rich vein, the mill owners, in an unexpectedly enlightened gesture, hired European music teachers for the workers and their children, inaugurating a strong taste for the high music literacy Poole discovered on his arrival. (A 1921 article from the Leaksville Arrow boasts of the towns’ community chorus, two guitar and mandolin orchestras, three brass bands, senior and junior orchestras, and myriad fiddle and string-band contests, dances, and concerts.) No wonder Poole had a crazy-quilt repertoire. Traditional and recent ballads and tunes, slightly dusty popular songs rescued from a Victorian piano bench or learned off stray 78s, bathetic lamentations from the Civil War era, the first winking, nudging music from vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley, heart songs, event songs—he loved them all. And so did his growing audience, drawn in too by the newly familiar sound of his banjo. Poole and his generation were legatees to important physical and social changes to the banjo in the years preceding their birth. The instrument they played was nothing like the one brought to America by enslaved Africans the century before. In its early incarnation, the banjo consisted of a skin head tacked across a gourd body, attached to a long, fretless neck and played with thick gut strings. It remained a black instrument until the beginning of the 19th century, when, with the growing popularity of minstrel shows, white musicians took it up in greater numbers. By the 1840s, the five-string banjo was a cornerstone of this expanding entertainment—and the first instance of an artistic appropriation that threads through blues to bebop to hip-hop. As originally played in the frailing or clawhammer style—repeated and percussive rhythmic figures—the banjo, known for its "barbaric" sound, was also synonymous with racist characterizations. From curio cabinets to Currier and Ives, images of white minstrels aping black men abounded. (African-American musicians were not allowed onstage until later in the 19th century and then only in blackface.) After the Civil War, the shows shifted from the rural context to extravagant spectacles. Now burnt-cork performers in garish top hats and tails replaced the smaller, more primitive ensembles. By the end of the 19th century minstrel songs morphed into "coon songs," even more derogatory ditties accompanied less by banjo than by the sort of elaborate orchestration underlying the original "You Ain’t Talking to Me," written in 1909 by the black composer Shelton Brooks and recorded that same year by a Philadelphia policeman turned entertainer named Eddie Morton. Charlie Poole’s "You Ain’t Talkin’ to Me," meanwhile, recorded eighteen years later, could well be his theme song. Musically, he both pared it down—changing the melody from minor to major, dropping the first verse, eliminating the dotted ragtime figures—and smartened it up, entwining the steady fiddle melody with contrasting arpeggios on guitar and banjo. Such novelty of arrangement combined with his straightforward, non-"coon" delivery of freewheeling lyrics seemingly written for him ("You fed me good but I can’t chop wood, you ain’t talkin’ to me"") epitomizes Poole’s worldview, song-wise and otherwise. While minstrelsy denigrated blacks, it refined the instrument they brought to the fore. In an era celebrated for its torrent of inventions and patents, this most Rube Goldbergian of musical instruments attracted the nervous and curious energy of American tinkerers, who evolved the banjo from a gourd body to a wooden rim, with machined hooks replacing tacks to secure the head. The adoption of frets initiated an even-tempered scale, further codifying the instrument’s westernization. As manufacturers sprang up, good, playable mass-produced banjos became available no further than the local music store, traveling instrument salesman, or even that ubiquitous outhouse occupant, the Sears, Roebuck Catalogue. These physical changes encouraged zealots devoted to "elevating" the banjo by distancing it from its earlier associations. No more the barbaric bangers of old, modern players, now called banjoists, would pick upon the strings in the manner of classical guitar. Guitar-style banjo was in. Banjo-style banjo was out. And the once-popular image of a banjo-playing white man in blackface was superseded by that of a banjo-playing white man in black tie and tails. From simple dance tunes these modern banjo players turned to hot-off-the-press Sousa marches, two-steps, cakewalks, and rags (and, for the adventurous, transcriptions of "Flight of the Bumblebee" and "The William Tell Overture"). The era’s popular music reflected the country’s buoyant mood, and the banjo, now the quintessential "American" instrument, was the perfect symbol of that strutting national self-assuredness. The appeal translated well through phonographs. Banjo recordings now sold in the tens of thousands, in part because of the instrument’s tone, which was miraculously well suited to overcoming the limited dynamic range of early acoustic recording. In northern cities in the years leading to World War One, the four-string tenor banjo came to supplant the five-string version, which continued its development most strongly in the South. But even in the many regions where white and black musicians continued to play clawhammer banjo, guitar- or "classic"-style, as it was now called, began to trickle down and up-and-coming musicians took to picking. The venerable banjoist Uncle Dave Macon, who learned firsthand from vaudeville performers passing through his family’s boardinghouse in 1880s Nashville, used three-finger picking to great advantage on songs like "Uncle Dave’s Beloved Solo," against which his clawhammer recordings pale. Another three-finger/clawhammer banjoist—and noted fiddler to boot—was Frank Jenkins, whose rolling variations rendered new the 1820s chestnut "Home Sweet Home," recorded in 1927. Later that year the song served to showcase the talents of Mack Woolbright, a blind banjoist from the Flint Hill community of Cleveland County, North Carolina. (Woolbright’s influence was far-reaching. At age six, a neighborhood boy named Earl Scruggs watched him pick out the melody of "Home Sweet Home," marveling at the blind musician’s prowess. It remained a vivid recollection for Scruggs, who went on to record it himself in 1960.) Among the most colorful of country finger-style banjoists was Samuel Casco Moore. As a teenager Moore pursued classical violin, but soon abandoned it for banjo, guitar, and a host of less forgiving instruments. By 1920 he was a featured performer on Broadway in the Ziegfeld Follies, introducing polite New York society to the musical saw and an eight-string guitar hybrid called the Octa-Chorda. As part of his Keith-Orpheum vaudeville act "Spooning and Ballooning," he played melody on a toy balloon backed up by spoons. But there is nothing flip about the muscular banjo playing on his version of "Dixie Medley"—another number from his vaudeville show—which exhibits a link between classic-vaudeville and pre-bluegrass finger-picking, as banjo historian Eli Kaufman has noted. In their transition to classic-style banjo, these musicians created rich variants on the mode. But none did so with more impact than Charlie Poole. Poole started frailing at the age of eight, on a gourd banjo he built himself. In addition to what he learned from a local banjoist/teacher named Daner Johnson, a second cousin who popularized finger-picking in the region, Poole modeled his playing on that of his idol, Fred Van Eps, one of the most critically acclaimed banjo players of the day. In an already time-honored tradition, Poole learned by copying records like Van Eps’s 1911 Edison disc "The Infanta March," which he recorded fifteen years later as "Sunset March." Poole’s hand injury would forever keep him from replicating Van Eps’s technical brilliance. So he distilled the tune to its essential melody by reducing the ornate and demanding banjo parts, simplifying the right-hand flourishes in favor of single-string technique, and changing the 6/8 time to an easier 2/4 gait. Much as he wished to be a soloist in the style of Van Eps, however, Poole’s few ventures in that vein never took. A more immediate figure in his musical destiny was the fiddler Posey Wilson Rorer, whom he met shortly after arriving in Spray. Born a year before Poole in Franklin County, Virginia, just north of Spray, Rorer also started out playing a homemade banjo, but switched to fiddle at age twelve. Despite being hobbled by clubfeet, Rorer was known to clamber upon tables and dance madly when in his cups, making him a fitting accompanist to Poole in more ways than one. Hellions both, the pair loved nothing more than traveling, raising Cain, playing music and having a drink, and another tune, and another drink. They grew even closer when Poole married Rorer’s sister Lou Emma in 1920. One of the first Poole-Rorer gigs was running a still for local moonshiners, an engagement that ultimately furthered their musical careers. While the crystalline liquid accumulated, the two distilled the artistry of their playing. And with part of his bootlegging profits, Poole got himself the best banjo $132 would buy: an early 1900s Orpheum #3 Special. Poole and Rorer soon hooked up with other Spray musicians—including guitarist Norman Woodlieff, a consistent third of the original North Carolina Ramblers—with whom they began traversing the region, gaining fame among the farmers, mill workers, and miners who comprised their audiences. Though Poole and Rorer continued to work day jobs, it was clear they were onto something that could lift them from the drudgery of millwork. The band’s reputation was growing as quickly as its repertoire, and Charlie Poole was becoming a musician to reckon with. The North Carolina Ramblers expanded their ramblings, traveling throughout the North Carolina-Virginia-West Virginia triangle, as far west as Montana and as far north as Canada. But no journey proved more important than the band’s pilgrimage to New York to make phonograph records in June 1925. What prompted the venture, beyond Poole’s insatiable wanderlust, were likely the pallid but successful 1923 OKeh recordings of Virginia guitarist/singer Henry Whitter, which served to convince many southern performers that they could do just as well or better. One thing for sure, Poole was mad for records. Some, like the aforementioned Van Eps disc, he played and replayed in an attempt to unlock its banjo secrets. Others, like those of Big Chief Henry’s Indian String Band—a trio with a crisp sound close to Poole’s own—he listened to repeatedly for the sheer pleasure it brought him. En route to New York, Poole, Rorer, and Woodlieff worked temporary jobs until Poole could arrange an audition at the Columbia studios. It took just a few notes of "Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blues" to convince a group of artist and repertoire (A&R) men to record them several days later, on July 27. Like Athena from the head of Zeus, the North Carolina Ramblers’ sound emerged fully formed. The blueprint was simple and effective: Rorer’s shuffle-pulsed old-time fiddle laid a steady doubling of the melody under Poole’s barked-out lyrics and probing, percolating banjo. Nimble guitar figures by Woodlieff made the trio watertight. And to everyone’s amazement, "Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blues," flip-sided by "Can I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight Mister," sold 102,000 copies. For a fee of $75—more than all three would have earned in a week in the mills, but far less than these records’ popularity would eventually merit—Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers had recorded the first certifiable country music megahit. "The Deal," Poole’s largest-selling record ever, went on to become an early bluegrass standard, one that Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs went on to cover in 1957. The 1925 recording session’s other coupling was no slouch, either. "I’m the Man That Rode the Mule ’Round the World," a humorous take on a true incident involving the animal in question, and the first country recording of the 19th-century weeper "The Girl I Loved in Sunny Tennessee," sold over 65,000 copies. Re-recordings attest to the band’s popularity as well. In 1928 the Red Fox Chasers, a Virginia-based harmonica-front band, did "May I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight, Mister." Uncle Dave Macon came out with "Man That Rode the Mule Around the World." And in 1930, the Floyd County Ramblers’ "Sunny Tennessee" duplicated the melody and lyrics of Poole’s "The Girl I Left in Sunny Tennessee," while retaining their own charming handmade sound. If imitation isn’t the highest form of flattery, perhaps parody is. "The Bulldog Down in Sunny Tennessee," a lampoon by Doctor "Dock" Coble Walsh, the self-proclaimed "Banjo King of the Carolinas," was on store shelves less than three months after the Poole hit. The group Walsh went on to form, the Carolina Tar Heels, was one of the few Piedmont bands to give the North Carolina Ramblers a run for their money. Non-banjoists benefited from the Poole sound too, like the singer/composer Kelly Harrell. In 1925 Harrell had journeyed north to make records but was saddled with stiff and unconvincing studio accompanists. But two years later he got it right with musicians from the Poole gang, including Posey Rorer, with whom he formed the Virginia String Band. Their multi-textural instrumentation on songs like "My Wife, She Has Gone and Left Me" evoked the North Carolina Ramblers so successfully that Poole chose to cover the tune himself in 1928. Even the North Carolina Ramblers’ main competitors on the Columbia label, Gid Tanner and Fate Norris of the popular band the Skillet-Lickers, dipped into the Charlie Poole song bag, recording a version of "Goodbye Booze" the same year as his release. This surreal melding of one Poole hit and another ("Write a Letter to My Mother") is driven by Tanner’s famed falsetto and gritty fiddling. While the proliferation of Poole-inspired string-band recording artists would ultimately help put him out of business, in the years preceding the Great Depression his sales remained relatively strong as his playing continued to develop. Soon after the band’s recording premiere, Poole met and took an immediate liking to a gifted guitarist named Roy Cecil Harvey, a big, genial man with Harold Lloyd–style glasses and pomaded hair who replaced an ailing Norman Woodlieff. Forming a kind of country Odd Couple, Harvey became Felix Unger to Poole’s Oscar Madison. Harvey was neither a drinker nor a carouser, and he tried to curtail Poole’s sodden antics—first as a band member and then in his additional role as the band’s manager—to no discernible avail. Regardless, the unexpected triumph of the Ramblers recordings had begun to draw entreating telegrams from Columbia A&R man Frank Walker. Savvier now, Poole was not budging until his fee was upped. It was, and on September 16, 1926, the trio in its new incarnation was back in New York. The first day of recording was a wash, owing to an overly fluid celebration by Poole the night before. But the next day he roared back into the studio with "Goodbye Booze," evidencing his puckish sense of humor. (Friends and fans knew that Charlie Poole said goodbye to booze only between drinks.) Although the sheet music for the 1901 song describes it as a "coon temperance ditty," Poole did it characteristically—not in coon style but with tongue firmly in cheek and with a jug of moonshine at his elbow, courtesy of Columbia. The tune was coupled with Poole’s cover of "Monkey on a String," a novelty "laughing" song originally recorded in 1906 by the vaudevillian Cal Stewart. Poole sticks to the original, mostly—you’ll hear no mention of "Irishmen" or "I-talians" in Stewart’s version, for example—but his open-string banjo against Rorer’s double-stop fiddling lends resonance to a once solely frivolous tune. The most notable alteration, though, was the serial incomprehensibility of Poole’s vocals, making "Monkey" the "Louie, Louie" of old-time music. The puzzle to decode the record’s lyrics contributed to its strong sales of 76,000 copies. On the third day in the studio Poole recorded several instrumentals, including a pair of waltzes Columbia chose not to release. Amazingly, the resulting metal stamper or "waffle iron" used to press the 78 was found some forty years later, and the disc made from it, "A Kiss Waltz," was first issued in 1968. That day also produced "Leaving Home," Poole’s version of the ubiquitous "Frankie and Johnny." With its easy restrained tempo and currency, it was already a popular Ramblers bandstand number. Sadly, it lacks the showman’s touch Poole was said to have given it in person: in the verse describing Johnny’s murder, Poole would snap his fingers against the banjo head, producing a gunshot-like sound. It always brought down the house. The North Carolina Ramblers ended the September 1926 session with another pop offering, "There’ll Come a Time," by "After the Ball" composer Charles K. Harris, and "White House Blues," an oddly perky retelling of the assassination of President William McKinley. Sales for the vocal discs were brisk, but the fiddle tunes from the session did not sell, so Columbia pulled the plug on any more. Poole was probably relieved. He, like Roy Harvey, was increasingly drawn to modern pop music. With the profits from his new best-selling records, Poole financed an upgrade. The open-back banjo he had bought with moonshine money a near decade earlier reflected the apex of 19th-century banjo technology. But after the success of "The Deal" he paid double as much for a just-off-the-assembly-line Gibson RB4 Mastertone. This decidedly 20th-century instrument, with its silvered parts, steel reinforced neck, and laminated sound-amplifying resonator, became the gold-standard bluegrass banjo. Poole put the new instrument to good use at the North Carolina Ramblers’ next Columbia session on July 25, 1927, with a playlist that was a continuation of his recording style. Embedded in "If I Lose, I Don’t Care," for example, is another biographical nugget: "I can’t walk, neither can I talk/ just got back from the state of old New York." Typical too is Poole’s "Coon from Tennessee," another of his takes on a blackface song with verses altered and coon dialect dumped. The Georgia Crackers rendition from that same year reverts more to form. An unhappy change occurred at about this time, when Poole and Rorer had a falling-out over royalty payments, which Poole drank instead of divided. Rorer angrily quit, and the two never spoke again, a situation made all the more painful with Poole’s being married to Rorer’s sister Lou Emma. Yet it did not crush the spirit of the good-natured woman, who genuinely loved, easily forgave, and always welcomed home her errant husband. With Rorer gone, Roy Harvey and Poole’s predilection for Tin Pan Alley material was furthered by their hiring of Lonnie Austin, a fiddler/pianist who had toured vaudeville with a popular "hillbilly orchestra" called the H.M. Barnes Blue Ridge Ramblers. Now supplanting Rorer’s saw-stroke dance lope and earthy tone was Austin’s smooth, long bow and upper-register highlights. And where Rorer would simply double melody under Poole’s singing, Austin produced ever-changing clever background figures. The addition fleshed out the ensemble nicely, as reflected in the North Carolina Ramblers’ July 1928 recording for Columbia. In the style of the "Corn Licker Still in Georgia" 78s, the Skillet-Lickers’ popular series of self-parodying hillbilly skits laced with old-time music, the North Carolina Ramblers recorded the medley "Shootin’ Creek," in honor of a town—and the sort of fiddle tunes—they had played with Posey Rorer. The first minute offers a too brief opportunity to hear what Poole sounded like playing second banjo to a solo fiddle at the many dances he worked over the years. Another song from the session, "Ramblin’ Blues," is a catalog of performing skills, from Poole and Harvey’s crisscrossing cascade of finger-picked arpeggios to Austin’s playful little blues slide to Poole’s whistling solo, an emulation of his performing idol (and fellow "Columbia Exclusive Artist") Al Jolson. Hands down, this was the best-selling pairing of the session. The rest was of the genus Musty Victoriana: some home-and-hearth offerings, a couple of funny numbers, and a few love songs, including the period piece "I Once Loved a Sailor." Written as "Come Take a Trip in My Airship," by George ("In the Good Old Summertime") Evans and recorded under that title in 1904 by the then-popular singer Billy Murray, the song celebrates both the age-old story of romantic love and the invention of powered flight. ("Not a sailor who sailed on the bright foaming sea," the lover being serenaded "sailed like a bird on the wing.") The mediated success of these recordings—none would match that of Poole’s 1925 premiere—kept the North Carolina Ramblers touring, which in turn fueled continued interest from the label. In 1929 they returned to Columbia’s mikes. The mix of songs was once again characteristic. "He Rambled" is Poole’s take on the 1906 recording "Oh, Didn’t He Ramble," by the character singer Arthur Collins. Intoning the old English tale of "the roving, fighting black sheep of the family," Poole seems to singing about himself. The band also revisited more historical material with "Bill Mason," based on a poem reprinted in magazines and anthologies like 1893’s Famous Dramatic Recitations. And "Sweet Sunny South" goes back to 1864, when it was published in war-torn Dixie as "Take Me Home" by Eugene Raymond, the purported author of "Pop! Goes the Weasel." With its mournful scenes of loss, abandonment, and decay, "Sweet Sunny South" continued to find great resonance with Southern audiences. (Another contemporary country band, Da Costa Woltz’s Southern Broadcasters, recorded "Sweet Sunny South" just two years before Poole’s chirpier, more modern performance.) Within the past year Poole, Harvey, and Austin had expanded their ensemble with Odell Smith, creating a twin-fiddle front line, and by adding Lucy Terry, a pianist. Opting to stay with the tried-and-true trio formula, however, Columbia declined to record the Charlie Poole Orchestra. Poole, undeterred, made the rounds of other labels. Because he was still under exclusive contract at Columbia, Poole’s new band was forced to record under a pseudonym. So, at Brunswick they were the Allegheny Highlanders, under which name they recorded "A Trip to New York," four playlets once again meant to compete with the "Corn Licker Still in Georgia" 78s. Despite being interspersed with addictive snippets of the dance repertoire Poole played back home, the skits themselves were weak and nowhere near the hellzapoppin’ experience of the Skillet-Lickers recordings. "A Trip to New York" found few takers. At Paramount, the Charlie Poole Orchestra signed as the Highlanders and created a peephole into the future. The twin-fiddle approach was not unique to them—the Skillet-Lickers had been plying that sound for years—but the laser precision of the Highlanders’ front line foretold the day when tight bluegrass bands would harness the energy of in-sync fiddles to heighten an already highly charged music. Also new was the use of breaks, borrowed from solo-driven jazz and inorganic to old-time music, where repeated restatement by all melody players was the norm. Poole implanted hand-in-glove rhythm section/banjo solos into the middle of each Highlander arrangement like the prize in a Cracker Jack box. The breaks Poole played on "Lynchburg Town," recorded as a straight old-time tune by the Blue Ridge Highballers in 1926, utilize his classic-cum-country style. But the solo he launches into on "Flop Eared Mule" could serve as the primer for Bluegrass Banjo 101. Country record fans wouldn’t hear its like again until Earl Scruggs joined Bill Monroe in 1946, seventeen years later. Still, sales of the Highlanders recordings were modest. In the parlance of the movie studios of the day, Paramount didn’t release the records so much as allow them to escape. The twin whammies of the label’s favoring blues at the expense of country and the beginnings of the Great Depression did nothing to further sales. And so a forthcoming sound of country music arrived with a whisper. Poole’s ramblings were increasingly reined in by the diminished audiences and record sales that began plaguing the industry almost immediately after the crash. Yet in January 1930, the Ramblers were back in Columbia’s New York studios with Odell Smith replacing Lonnie Austin, who returned to the H.M. Barnes barnstorming show. They started that session with "Sweet Sixteen" and "Write a Letter to My Mother," a Civil War–themed song published in New York in 1864. And Poole took another turn at a classic Fred Van Eps solo: "Dixie Medley," which he dubbed "Southern Medley." Widely recorded at the turn of the century, Dixie medleys were combinations of Southern tunes popularized by minstrelsy. Spotlighting the Dan Emmet classic "Dixie" and featuring fiddle tunes like "Turkey in the Straw," the medleys tended to include "Swanee River" and other Stephen Foster songs that since before the Civil War had come to epitomize Southern life but were, in fact, rarely recorded by Southern musicians. Poole also chose to record "It’s Movin’ Day," yet another of his de-fused "coon" songs. But this one had a particularly urban perspective. A close listen to the lyrics of the original, recorded nearly a quarter century before, reveals the admonition to "put your things on that stoop"—a singularly New York reference that would have been understood by Tin Pan Alley aficionados. Poole dropped the verse. Back home in North Carolina, where people barely scraped by even in good times, the Depression was having devastating effect, and Poole found what gigs he could. For a while, he held down a job hosting a talent show on a local radio station, until itchy feet got the better of him. He put his band to work playing between reels in movie houses, and during the band’s thirty-city tour in that capacity, audiences booed when the film resumed. But longer breadlines meant shorter lines at shows of all kinds, and folks having trouble paying the rent were not going to pony up 25 cents for a concert, much less 75 cents for a disc. Things got so bad that shortly before his final recording session on Sept. 9, 1930, Poole was forced to part with his prized Gibson Mastertone. To play the session, he borrowed a banjo from a friend in Virginia, which he later pawned during a drunken spree. Its owner was forced to trek to West Virginia to redeem it. (Poole had relinquished his own banjo for a $50 down payment from a fan of his named Preston Young, who the next year made the first recorded version of "I’ll Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms," together with Posey Rorer and another banjoist, Buster Carter.) While it now took more and more liquor to get Poole drunk—and longer and longer for him to recover—it still didn’t show in his music. In his last recording session, a quirky, potent mixture of past and present, you can hear Poole’s mastery of a style he had perfected over the years ("Good-Bye Sweet Liza Jane") and a hint of what more he might have done with it ("Milwaukee Blues"). He ended his recording career the way he began it: with a song of longing and loss. The wistful images of a dead loved one’s neglected home in "Where the Whippoorwill Is Whispering Good-night" book-end those in Poole’s very first recording, "The Girl I Left in Sunny Tennessee." The tracks from Poole’s final session, like all the rest, are full of the bright, crisp energy he manufactured deep within. Yet sales were so bad that some of the titles—"Milwaukee Blues," for example—were only released the summer after Poole’s death, while others, such as "Mother’s Last Farewell Kiss," remained unissued for almost half a century. By the winter of 1931, Poole was back in the mills. It was almost as if his whirlwind music career had never happened. And it got worse. News that Columbia cancelled his record contract propelled him into a deep depression, causing him to drink more and play less. His fortunes had changed so dramatically that when he died later that year, his death certificate listed his occupation as "mill worker" rather than "musician." But at his lowest point, in a scene that could only happen in the movies, an offer came from Hollywood for Poole to provide music for a film. With the California train tickets propped upon his dresser, Poole celebrated his good fortune by going on a suicidal thirteen-week bender that ended with him staggering through the streets of Spray. "Old Charlie’s been drunk a lot of times, but this time old Charlie’s gonna kick the bucket," he told the men who picked him up and carried to the home of his sister. His nephew found him dead the next morning. Charlie Poole was thirty-nine years old. Poole’s early death saddened but didn’t surprise his friends and neighbors. With his hard drinking, numerous brushes with the law, and rowdy, wandering ways, Poole was always a hair’s breadth from some precipice. But it was just those narrow escapes that gave his songs their resonance, adding to his allure. And while Poole was far from universally liked, the people knew him probably shared the sentiment of one local woman, who said, "I hated Charlie Poole, but when he died, I cried." In the heartlands where Poole performed, his musical legacy endured. New ballads were written about him, bands played and recorded his old songs, and banjoists, knowingly or not, incorporated ideas into their music that he had a hand in creating. The bluegrass banjo star Don Reno, who integrated elements of Poole’s single-string work into what became known as "Reno-style" banjo, went straight to the source, learning his first banjo tune, "Can I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight, Mister," off the North Carolina Ramblers recording. But an entire generation of banjoists were unwittingly passed the Poole baton through songs like "Married Life Blues," recorded by Snuffy Jenkins in 1940. Charlie Poole’s fame broadened beyond the Piedmont, thanks to his inclusion in Harry Smith’s historic 1952 Folkways Records "Anthology of American Folk Music." And later reissues by County Records in the 1960s and ’70s assured that in the expanding revival of old-time music, Poole lived on. Eight decades after his first recording session in 1925 Charlie Poole’s music continues to find passionate fans around the world. And there’s no reason to think it won’t for another eight. Henry "Hank" Sapoznik Olive Bridge, New York Winter 2005 Note: It is impossible to overstate the contribution made by Kinney Rorrer to the scholarship on Charlie Poole. His 1982 book, Rambling Blues: The Life and Songs of Charlie Poole (Old Time Music, out of print), was key in the writing of these notes. Henry "Hank" Sapoznik, a longtime devotee of the music of Charlie Poole, won the 2002 George Foster Peabody Award for his National Public Radio series "The Yiddish Radio Project." He was also nominated for a 2001 Emmy award for his score to the baseball documentary The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, and his book Klezmer! Jewish Music from Old World to Our World (Schirmer Books, 1999) won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Excellence in Music Scholarship in 2000. The executive director of the non-profit folk arts organization Living Traditions, Sapoznik plays banjo and sings with the New York old-time band the Brooklyn Corn Dodgers and the Yiddish music trio the Youngers of Zion. This is his second production for Columbia Legacy. Forward by Kinney Rorrer Fairy tales and nursery rhymes were not what I listened to as a chap growing up in the mill villages of the North Carolina Piedmont in the 1950s. Instead what I heard from my father were "Charlie Poole stories." Having lived with the man for almost ten years, he had an inexhaustible supply of tales about Poole’s life and adventures. In 1957 my dad brought home a stack of Charlie’s old black label Columbia 78 rpm records. What I heard as I watched those spinning labels captivated my musical soul. Playing them on our wind-up Victrola, I would ram my head as far as I could up into the horn to hear every snap of Poole’s banjo strings. The fascination deepened when my dad brought out an old fiddle and began to play the very same tunes—pieces he’d learned firsthand from the man playing fiddle on many of the 78s: his uncle and legal guardian, Posey Rorer. At our father’s encouragement my brother and I took up the guitar and banjo, respectively, and we too began playing along with the old 78s. My pursuit of these sounds led me to visit and play with the others who had recorded with Poole: Norman Woodlieff and Lonnie Austin. I also began a quest to recover copies of every 78 Poole and Rorer ever released. The more I listened to the stories of Poole’s colorful escapades and to his recordings, the more I realized how unique he was. A Hollywood screenwriter would be hard put to invent such a character. And in terms of music, he not only sang with authority but, using just three acoustic instruments gathered around a single microphone, created timeless recordings of American folk songs, sentimental ballads, and mountain dance tunes, preserving and disseminating them for future generations of music fans. Even now, after nearly fifty years of hearing Poole’s vinegary bark and Rorer’s mountain fiddling, the sounds coming out of my dad’s old Victrola excite me. And Charlie Poole’s presence continues to resonate as strongly as his banjo. Kinney Rorrer Author of "Rambling Blues: The Life and Songs of Charlie Poole" and co-host of "Back to the Blue Ridge" on WVTF-FM in Roanoke, Virginia.
CHARLIE POOLE DOCUMENTARY FILM in-progress For more information on this documentary, contact: Amy Lombardi, Call Girl PR, 4059 W. Patterson Ave., Chicago, IL 60641, (773) 205-8688 Director George Goehl and Straight Six Films have started production on North Carolina Rambler: The Legend of Charlie Poole. The feature-length documentary will explore the life and music of old-time banjo player and singer Charlie Poole (1892-1931). Charlie Poole and his North Carolina Ramblers were one of the most exciting and influential hillbilly bands of the 1920s. A product of the industrialized South, Poole created a unique fusion, melding mountain ballads and fiddle tunes with classical banjo picking, minstrel songs, Tin Pan Alley, and ragtime syncopation. His and the Ramblers’ intricate picking patterns and walking arpeggios heavily influenced the creation of bluegrass music. Poole’s also had a dramatic impact as a banjo player. His sophisticated three-finger melodic banjo style helped transform the instrument’s role in southern white music as often a comedic prop to an integral fixture in country and bluegrass music. Poole’s innovative three-finger banjo style laid the foundation for banjo greats and fellow North Carolinians Don Reno and Earl Scruggs. Poole was not only a trailblazer musically. He also embodied the beginning of an archetype in country music--the restless rambler whose hard drinking and hard living created great legend. Before Jimmie Rodgers or Hank Williams, there was Charlie Poole. Poole’s wanderlust took him through the North Carolina Piedmont, up into the Virginias and Ohio and as far west as Montana and as far north as Canada. When heading out on “tour” he would simply start walking down the road and when someone stopped and asked where he was going, he’d reply, “Wherever you are!” and jump in. He was a powerful entertainer who was influenced by the vaudeville touring companies that came through North Carolina. During his performances, it was common for Poole to jump over a chair and land standing on his hands or do cartwheels across the stage. It seems that everyone who came in contact with Poole had a story to tell. Many of these stories involve his affection for moonshine. His heavy use of alcohol became more severe as his career waned during the Depression, eventually indulging in an 18-day drinking binge that took his life. Goehl’s documentary, North Carolina Rambler: The Legend of Charlie Poole, will interweave rare historical footage, archival photographs, graphic animation, and interviews with musicians and music scholars to tell the story of one of the most influential and yet unheralded pioneers of country music. 2005 Tenth Annual Charlie Poole Music Festival FOR MORE INFORMATION:  WWW.CHARLIE-POOLE.COM Join us for the Tenth Annual Charlie Poole Music Festival May 20 & 21 at Governor Morehead Park in Eden, NC! Tickets Go On Sale March 1, 2005 • Tony Trischka • Norman & Nancy Blake • Tom, Brad & Alice • The Joe Thompson Band • Debby McClatchy • The Jeanette Williams Band • New North Carolina Ramblers • Hungry Hash House Ramblers • Wayne Seymour & Fred Reynolds • Carolina Roustabouts • Beaucoup Blue • Carolina Borderline • The Brooklyn Corn Dodgers Symposium on Charlie Poole at UNC - Chapel Hill April 8th Dynamic Legacies: Charlie Poole and the Evolution and Transmission of the Southern String Band Tradition Sponsored by the * Southern Folklife Collection and Music in Context * April 8, 2005; 9am-5pm Pleasants Room, Wilson Library University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill All events are free and open to the public Space is limited, please RSVP to smweiss@email.unc.edu Morning sessions will feature student papers on string band traditions. * Discussant: Alan Jabbour, former director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Afternoon sessions will feature a panel discussion on Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers. Participants include: * Henry "Hank" Sapoznik, Producer of "You Ain't Talkin' To Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music" Columbia Legacy. * George Goehl, Straight Six Films. Currently producing a feature-length documentary about the life and music of Charlie Poole. * Kinney Rorrer, Author of "Ramblin' Blues: The Life and Songs of Charlie Poole." * Panel Moderator: Jocelyn Neal, Assistant Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The afternoon sessions will also include a keynote address from "Hank" Sapoznik and a free concert (TBA).**
cover art by Robert Crumb product shot product shot Charlie Poole & the NC Ramblers Courtesy of Kinney Rorrer Charlie Poole and the NC Ramblers Courtesy of Kinney Rorrer Charlie Poole credit: Kinney Rorrer to download : click image, right-click large image (hold-click for Mac) and download to desktop
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