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| Feathers |
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I've just finished reading Lost Highway by Peter Guralnick.
At first I was a wee bit disappointed as I thought it would be pretty exclusively about country music. Country music does feature writ large but there is also a smattering of blues and rockabilly - which on reflection is no bad thing.
It features stories about artists lives on the road and as well as famous artists such as Elvis, Ernest Tubb,Merle Haggard and Howlin' Wolf it also features less famous ones such as Deford Bailey,Sleepy LaBeef and James Talley and the chapters on these rarely featured artists are perhaps the most interesting.
The book was written in the late 1970s and the chapter on Charlie Feathers is entitled the Last of the Rockabillies and features him playing a series of small clubs in an attempt to recapture the fame he enjoyed during his early years.
Charlie Rich also enjoyed fame at Sun at the start of his career. There then followed a period in the wilderness before he achieved world wide success with The Most Beautiful Girl in the World and Behind Closed Doors.Interestingly the book relates how he struggled to come to terms with this new found fame and all it's trappings.
Interesting stuff and well worth a read (and a listen).
Charlie Feathers is the man
ReplyDeleteDid it say anything about His relationship with Junior Kimbrough.
ReplyDeleteThere is a brief reference Erik " He learnt guitar from a local black sharecropper named Junior Kimbrough who according to Charley "was the greatest blues singer in the world. Chuck Berry had nothing on him. I had him teach my son to play and what little I learned I got from him"
ReplyDeleteThe book however was written around 1979 well before Junior's belated but well earned rise to fame.20 years on and I suspect there would be much more about him