Charles W. Caldwell, b. May 18, 1943, d. September 3, 2003 was a blues musician from Mississippi, known for a raw and fiery brand of electric North Mississippi hill country blues.
Caldwell was a lifelong resident of the hill country around Coffeeville, Mississippi. He spent most of his adult life working at an industrial plant in Grenada, Mississippi that manufactured heating and cooling equipment. His public performances were limited to stints at parties and local juke joints. Although Caldwell had begun playing the blues as a teenager, his repertoire remained unrecorded until 2002, when he met Fat Possum Records boss Matthew Johnson. Impressed with Caldwell's playing and personal charisma, Thompson set up recording sessions at The Money Shot in Water Valley, Mississippi. Most songs featured just Caldwell's voice and electric guitar, though a few tracks included minimal drums. Midway through the sessions, Caldwell was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, but he doggedly continued recording. He died in September 2003 at the age of 60.[4]
His sole album, Remember Me, was released posthumously on 24 February 2004, garnering favorable reviews and comparisons to such artists as labelmate Junior Kimbrough, John Lee Hooker, and the early Muddy Waters.
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By Steve Leggett
Charles Caldwell was a tall (six foot eight) and charismatic guitar player who unfortunately was dealt a cruel hand by the music fates. Born in 1943, Caldwell lived his whole life in the north Mississippi hill country around Coffeeville, working at a fan-making factory in Greneda, and playing the local juke joints on the weekends for often no more pay than free liquor. He got his first guitar at the age of 14, the hollow-body Gibson 135 that he used the rest of his life to turn out the raw and passionate electric blues that was favored in the region. By the time Fat Possum founder Matthew Johnson stumbled across him in May of 2002, Caldwell was already dying of pancreatic cancer. His sole album, the fiery Remember Me, was recorded while Caldwell was undergoing chemo for his illness, which finally took his life in September of 2003. Remember Me came out on Fat Possum the following year, an amazing testament to Caldwell's considerable talent, and it remains a masterpiece of modern Mississippi blues.
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By Matthew Johnson
Just ten or twelve years ago, you could go into a town of 800 and find at least three old guys who could play some guitar. Now it's hard to find anyone who plays at all, much less anyone really good. And the good players still living lose half their ability as a result of strokes and other illnesses or having been scared into joining the church. Everything in this business is in short supply: our budget, the number of good artists, the time they have left.
But seeing Charles Caldwell play changed everything for me. He still enjoyed playing; he was charismatic; he had a presence. In my view, Charles would be the next bomb, a last, undiscovered bastion of a dying breed. Did he want to make a record? Hell yes.
I remember the last time I saw him. Charles didn't know how to just sit around and be sick, he was a horrible patient. During chemotherapy he had built a shed for his four-wheeler and had painted the sheet metal on his tractor. He had something he wanted to show me. I followed him around to the backyard, where next to a chicken coop, and out of reach of the surviving coon dogs, stood a small cage holding a red fox. It had been destroying his garden, so he'd trapped it. I bent down to look, and it was barking and hissing. “You need it?” he asked.
In my truck I had a pair of welding gloves that were thick enough to handle the animal, but that didn't seem reason enough.
“Well, do you want it then?”
(From Fat Possum Records)