Rambling with Charlie

In the past couple of years, one of the old-time musicians I've been listening to quite a bit is Charlie Poole (1892-1931), a banjo-playing songster who made several records in the late 1920s with his band, the North Carolina Ramblers. You can imagine my excitement when I found out, just a few days ago, that one of my favorite present-day (i.e., not dead yet) singer/songwriters, Loudon Wainwright III, has released a two-disc album of new material inspired by the life and work of Charlie Poole.
On the album, "High, Wide & Handsome," Wainwright and friends cover Poole classics such as "If I Lose" and "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down," but it also includes new songs that he wrote from the point of view of Poole, attempting to put himself into the man's long-since-decomposed rambling shoes. The songs range from the touchingly sentimental to the snort-moonshine-out-your-nose hilarious ... you can download some (free) sample .mp3s and/or view videos at LWIII's Charlie Poole Project Web site. It's pretty cool, if you're into this sort of thing where music and history intertwine.

Terry Gross, host of NPR's "Fresh Air," recently did an interview with Wainwright about his Charlie Poole project. You can listen to it here: FRESH AIR

Since I'm on the subject of Charlie Poole, here's a video I did a few months ago when I was working out how to play "Leaving Home," Charlie's version of the famous love-gone-homicidally-wrong song "Frankie and Johnny."