When one of the guys joking around with Charlie Poole told him he knew of a better banjo player, Poole replied that he could outstrum the man — upside down.
Then he proceeded to do just that.
“He put himself on his hands and put his feet (against the wall) to brace himself, and he played that banjo standing on his head,” said Kinney Rorrer, a retired college history teacher whose great-uncle played in a band with Poole in the 1920s.
Poole, of the Spray community in Eden, died in 1931 at 39. But his music lives on — notably in the upcoming concert “An Evening with Loudon Wainwright III.”
Wainwright won this year’s Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album. The album celebrates Poole’s music.
Proceeds from the Sept. 25 concert will benefit Piedmont Folk Legacies’ effort to save the historic Nantucket Mill and turn it into the National Banjo Center and to help Governor Morehead Park. Tickets must be bought in advance.
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“It’s such an honor to have someone of his stature to want to do something for us,” Louise Price, co-founder of the annual Charlie Poole Music Festival, said of Wainwright’s free performance. “He wants to do this for Poole’s town.”
Poole grew up in a cotton mill family in Randolph County. But playing the banjo, something he took a liking to as a boy, soon beat working a regular job. By 22, he had begun rambling with his banjo, making music and drinking wherever he went.
About 1918, he met Rorrer’s great uncle, a fiddler named Posey Rorrer, who eventually brought him back to Spray. That’s where he fell in love with Posey Rorrer’s sister.
“Lou Emma had to deal with a man who she loved who was so unreliable,” said Kinney Rorrer, who grew up in Eden and also is the author of “Ramblin’ Blues: The Life and Songs of Charlie Poole.” He is a member of the New North Carolina Ramblers, which is the opening act for Wainwright’s concert.
“He would leave home and be gone months at a time, and she would have no idea where he was,” Rorrer said.
Soon, Poole, Posey Rorrer and a guitar player from Spray named Norman Woodlieff were touring through the hills of Virginia and fiddler conventions in Tennessee and West Virginia.
In 1925, Poole’s group recorded for Columbia Records. A record that sold 20,000 was considered a hit. When Poole’s first record — “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blues/Can I Sleep In Your Barn Tonight, Mister?” — came out in September 1925, it sold 102,000 copies and was deemed the first country megahit.
A second record sold more than 65,000 copies. At the time, only an estimated 600,000 phonographs had been sold in the South, according to Rorrer.
“It encouraged the record companies to seek out more rural talent,” he said.
Poole became one of the first major country music stars. A case can be made that he was the first, according to country music historians.
But the stock market crash of 1929 changed everything, and afterward, nobody could sell records.
Poole continued to ramble.
Sometimes he ended up in a place where he wasn’t popular, and he’d send Lou Emma a telegram asking for money to come home. Otherwise, he was a free spirit, often catching rides and going wherever the car was headed.
“He lived as he wanted, and not many people can say that,” Rorrer said.
By 1931, however, he was back at the mills in Spray. There, he drank himself to death. It’s written on his death certificate.
“He is an example of a man who was extraordinarily talented but burned out very quickly, like a shooting star,” Rorrer said.
Even with talent and a life that played out as a heartbreaking country song, the country music pioneer has never made it into the Country Music Hall of Fame — something Wainwright is trying to change by keeping Poole’s music alive.
Many of Poole’s tunes were recorded by performers such as Joan Baez, who would become more famous than Poole. John Mellencamp recorded the popular “White House Blues.” The Grateful Dead recorded “Don’t Let the Deal Go Down.” Even the first chapter of Bob Dylan’s autobiography mentions Charlie Poole.
“He never had an advocate to push for it,” Rorrer said.
The first County Music Hall of Fame inductee, Jimmie Rodgers, who recorded two years after Poole, had legends Ernest Tubb and Gene Autry pushing for him. One of the daughters of Mother Maybelle of The Carter Family — the first vocal group to become country music stars — married Johnny Cash.
“Charlie died during the worst years of the Depression, and people moved on,” Rorrer said. “I think he kind of fell between the cracks.”
They all deserved the honor, he said.
“To me, Charlie’s music is modern music,” Price said, wondering aloud if maybe the push should instead be for an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “It’s the foundation for everything we hear today in modern music.”
In 2005, Columbia Records released the box set “You Ain’t Talkin’ to Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music.”
“He listened to vaudeville, he listened to ragtime and tin pan alley — he listened to everything, including the classical music influence from the music teacher at the mill,” Price said about Poole’s sound. “He took all of it, and it went into him and came out something new.”
Now, people come from all over the world to visit his grave in the old Spray Cemetery.
“I had a guy who came here from Germany three or four years ago,” Rorrer said. “He had been to a jazz festival in New Orleans. He also loved Charlie Poole’s music.”
Rorrer, who had written the book by then, agreed to take him to the grave. Before going, however, the man asked to make one stop.
“He brought flowers to put on Charlie Poole’s grave,” Rorrer said. “I was touched that he wanted to do that. (Charlie) had fans all over the place.”
Contact Nancy McLaughlin at
373-7049 or nancy.mclaughlin@news-record.com
Country Music Hall of Fame criteria
Nominees for the Country Music Hall of Fame are judged based on “the degree to his/her contribution to the advancement of Country Music and on the indelibility of his/her impact.” For more information, go to cmaworld.com and look for the “Hall of Fame” tab.
Want to Go?
What: “An Evening with Loudon Wainwright III” to benefit Piedmont Folk Legacies’ projects
When: 5 p.m. Sept. 25, Governor Morehead Park, Eden
Information: Tickets are $25 and available through Monday at www.charlie-poole.com or by calling 623-1043 or 627-0816. No tickets will be sold at the gate.