Feathers revisited
I drove home for Mother's Day on Sunday, armed with nothing but rockabilly music to guide my steering hand for the 90-mile trip.
Around Creston, Charlie Feathers' time had arrived. As I listened to the Hillbilly Symphony I harkened back to the time I wrote about Feathers in my music column a couple years ago -- which I've decided to reprint here, as I will do with my old TWANG! columns now and again...
TWANG!
The Forgotten King -- Charlie Feathers
By DAVID REY
A four-year search ended last week in Seattle’s Tower Records when my trembling hands plucked “Get With It: Essential Recordings of Charlie Feathers (1954-69)” from the shelf in disbelief.
A compendium of all of Feathers’ recordings done in his early and later career, the CD is part of the ultra-cool lineup of low print offerings from Revenant Records. The Feathers CD has been out of print since its initial pressing in 1998 and has become almost impossible to find.
Yet, there it was in a megastore.
I heard “One Hand Loose” about a year after the Revenant disc was released and was completely smitten. The song was cut from the same stone that gave us Elvis’ classic Sun Records rockabilly tunes.
Elvis and Charlie Feathers were contemporaries at Sun Records destined to head the same direction musically but the opposite direction in every other regard.
Fate is very fickle, and Feathers, like fellow unrecognized rockabilly titans Billy Lee Riley and Sonny Burgess, ended up getting the short end of the stick while Elvis turned into, well, Elvis.
Part of Feathers’ problem was that he had one of the greatest natural country music singing voices walking the planet. Sun Records producer Sam Phillips heard Feathers sing and decided he had the second coming of Hank Williams on his hands.
Consequently, he only allowed Feathers to record country tunes at Sun while Feathers was itching to create rockabilly noise.
“He really had it, but he was a little difficult, and that was how I never managed to get the best out of him.” Phillips said of Feathers. “He could’ve been the George Jones of his day – a superb stylist.”
The four-hour ride from Seattle back to Cheney provided plenty of car stereo time to get through all 42 tracks on the disc – to the dismay of my 15-year-old daughter.
Phillips wasn’t stretching things in his estimation of Feathers’ talent to sing country music. Any skepticism was splatted like the Kittitas Valley bugs on my windshield when the opening track on the collection, “I’ve Been Deceived,” sauntered out of the car speakers.
Pure brilliance.
Feathers was not only one of the true purveyors of rockabilly, for which he is now recognized, but he turned out to also be possibly the greatest country singer nobody has ever heard.
It’s truly a shame that a man of his talent could not find his way to the spotlight while lesser mortals sidled up to the stardom trough.
Feathers spent the last decade or so of his life holding court at the Hilltop Lounge in Memphis, doling out earthshaking rockabilly and plaintive country howlings a half-hour at a time to the regular patrons and the rockabilly freaks that traveled thousands of miles to see him in the flesh.
Peter Guralnick vividly captures the modest Cult of Feathers in a priceless passage of “Lost Highway,” his seminal literary exploration of American roots artists.
Guralnick called a Feathers performance for the gathered believers at the Hilltop “An informal symphony of hillbilly soul.”
Oh Mama! The CD is the best I could do, but I would’ve loved to get in on some of that informal symphony music. How could I resist hillbilly soul?
Dave’s Top-5 Car Stereo Songs for Aug. 21
1. “Lonesome, On’ry and Mean” by Henry Rollins
2. “Stephanie Says” The Velvet Underground
3. “I’ve Been Deceived” by Charlie Feathers
4. “You Make Me Real” by The Doors
5. “Sway” by Alejandro Escovedo
Around Creston, Charlie Feathers' time had arrived. As I listened to the Hillbilly Symphony I harkened back to the time I wrote about Feathers in my music column a couple years ago -- which I've decided to reprint here, as I will do with my old TWANG! columns now and again...
TWANG!
The Forgotten King -- Charlie Feathers
By DAVID REY
A four-year search ended last week in Seattle’s Tower Records when my trembling hands plucked “Get With It: Essential Recordings of Charlie Feathers (1954-69)” from the shelf in disbelief.
A compendium of all of Feathers’ recordings done in his early and later career, the CD is part of the ultra-cool lineup of low print offerings from Revenant Records. The Feathers CD has been out of print since its initial pressing in 1998 and has become almost impossible to find.
Yet, there it was in a megastore.
I heard “One Hand Loose” about a year after the Revenant disc was released and was completely smitten. The song was cut from the same stone that gave us Elvis’ classic Sun Records rockabilly tunes.
Elvis and Charlie Feathers were contemporaries at Sun Records destined to head the same direction musically but the opposite direction in every other regard.
Fate is very fickle, and Feathers, like fellow unrecognized rockabilly titans Billy Lee Riley and Sonny Burgess, ended up getting the short end of the stick while Elvis turned into, well, Elvis.
Part of Feathers’ problem was that he had one of the greatest natural country music singing voices walking the planet. Sun Records producer Sam Phillips heard Feathers sing and decided he had the second coming of Hank Williams on his hands.
Consequently, he only allowed Feathers to record country tunes at Sun while Feathers was itching to create rockabilly noise.
“He really had it, but he was a little difficult, and that was how I never managed to get the best out of him.” Phillips said of Feathers. “He could’ve been the George Jones of his day – a superb stylist.”
The four-hour ride from Seattle back to Cheney provided plenty of car stereo time to get through all 42 tracks on the disc – to the dismay of my 15-year-old daughter.
Phillips wasn’t stretching things in his estimation of Feathers’ talent to sing country music. Any skepticism was splatted like the Kittitas Valley bugs on my windshield when the opening track on the collection, “I’ve Been Deceived,” sauntered out of the car speakers.
Pure brilliance.
Feathers was not only one of the true purveyors of rockabilly, for which he is now recognized, but he turned out to also be possibly the greatest country singer nobody has ever heard.
It’s truly a shame that a man of his talent could not find his way to the spotlight while lesser mortals sidled up to the stardom trough.
Feathers spent the last decade or so of his life holding court at the Hilltop Lounge in Memphis, doling out earthshaking rockabilly and plaintive country howlings a half-hour at a time to the regular patrons and the rockabilly freaks that traveled thousands of miles to see him in the flesh.
Peter Guralnick vividly captures the modest Cult of Feathers in a priceless passage of “Lost Highway,” his seminal literary exploration of American roots artists.
Guralnick called a Feathers performance for the gathered believers at the Hilltop “An informal symphony of hillbilly soul.”
Oh Mama! The CD is the best I could do, but I would’ve loved to get in on some of that informal symphony music. How could I resist hillbilly soul?
Dave’s Top-5 Car Stereo Songs for Aug. 21
1. “Lonesome, On’ry and Mean” by Henry Rollins
2. “Stephanie Says” The Velvet Underground
3. “I’ve Been Deceived” by Charlie Feathers
4. “You Make Me Real” by The Doors
5. “Sway” by Alejandro Escovedo
posted by D.Rey at 9:49 AM
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