Every Friday around 11 a.m. Central, it’s time for Classic Americana on Radio Heartland. We pull a special track from the archives or from deep in the shelves to spotlight a particular artist or song.

Charlie Rich was a singer-songwriter and musician whose career spanned the genres of rock, country, gospel, blues, R&B and jazz.

Born December 14, 1932, Charlie Rich grew up on a farm in Arkansas, not far from Memphis, Tennessee, or from the Mississippi Delta. Given that location, as a youngster, he was immersed in gospel, blues and country. After stints in college and the United States Air Force, Rich continued to work his family’s land in Arkansas while playing piano with jazz bands in Memphis at night. He recorded a few songs at home, and his wife, Margaret Ann, delivered one of the tapes to Sam Phillips and Bill Justis at Sun Records in Memphis. Eventually, Charlie Rich was signed on as a songwriter and session musician at Sun; he wrote songs for other artists, and he performed on recordings by Jerry Lee Lewis and Johny Cash, among others.

Rich left Sun Records in the early 1960s and began working with RCA Victor. Although Rich was unable to break through with his own recordings, he earned the respect and admiration of producer Billy Sherrill, who worked to reshape Charlie Rich as a country artist as the Nashville Sound was transforming to more sophisticated and layered arrangements and production.

The efforts paid off, and in 1973, Charlie Rich’s album Behind Closed Doors, along with its title track, went to the top of the country charts. The song “Behind Closed Doors” even proved a successful crossover hit, and Charlie Rich won a Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Performance for his singing on the track.

Rich enjoyed a string of successes in the 1970s, including with such songs as “The Most Beautiful Girl” and “A Very Special Love Song.”

What’s perhaps most interesting about Charlie Rich is that he was a fan and practitioner of many styles of music. Beyond rock and roll and country, he performed and recorded with artists in the blues, soul and R&B genres; he recorded an album of gospel music; and his final album, 1992’s Pictures and Paintings, was a jazz album — probably Charlie Rich’s favorite musical genre.

Because Charlie Rich was such a musical chameleon, it seems most fitting to feature Charlie Rich’s 1977 hit, “Rollin’ with the Flow” as our Classic Americana track of the week.

Charlie Rich died in 1995 at age 62. In his relatively short life, Rich certainly left his mark in the music world, embraced by artists and fans with a variety of tastes. For example, in R.E.M.’s late-1980s acoustic performance of the song “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville,” Michael Stipe concludes the performance with a subtle tribute to Charlie Rich by singing, “…when we get behind closed doors.”

External Links

Charlie Rich – official site