Heralded for his innovative fingerpicking technique and mix of pop, blues, and early country, banjo player and singer Charlie Poole led the North Carolina Ramblers, one of the great string bands of the 1920s.
Charles Cleveland Poole, b. March 22, 1892 in Alamance County, NC, d. May 21, 1931 in Eden, NC. A talented five-string banjo player who, because of a childhood hand injury, played in a thumb and three-fingered picking style that was later further developed by Earl Scruggs. In 1917, Poole teamed up with fiddle player Posey Rorer (b. 22 September 1891, Franklin County, Virginia, USA, d. March 1935) and the two played throughout West Virginia and North Carolina. In 1922, they added a guitarist, initially Clarence Foust, but when they made their first Columbia Records recordings on July 27, 1925, the regular guitarist was Norman Woodlieff. Perhaps in reference to their itinerant lifestyle, they adopted the name of North Carolina Ramblers in 1923 and as such, they became one of the most influential of the early string bands. They are still remembered for their recording of ‘Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down’. In 1926, Roy Harvey (b. March 24, 1892 in Monroe County, WV) replaced Woodlieff and in 1928, following a disagreement, Poole replaced Rorer with Lonnie William Austin (b. 1905, d. April 1997). Working with other musicians, including his son Charlie Jnr. (b. James Clay Poole, 1913), Poole continued to play but made his last recordings on September 9, 1930. (Woodlieff and Rorer made further recordings with other musicians and Harvey also recorded with his own North Carolina Ramblers band.) Poole was in real life very much a rambler, a trait that saw an early end to his 1911 marriage. He was also a heavy drinker and met a premature death from a heart attack in 1931, while celebrating an offer to play music for a Hollywood Western. Posey Rorer died in 1935 and was buried near Poole.
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By Sandra Brennan
Charlie Poole & the North Carolina Ramblers were one of the most popular string bands of the 1920s. If they didn't have the foot-stomping exuberance of their chief competitors, Georgia's Skillet Lickers, they offered a debonair precision that was equally infectious. Infused with ragtime and pop, their music almost seemed to swing at times (even though the use of that word to describe music was still several years in the future). Poole strongly influenced later banjo players, including those who would become the creators of bluegrass.
Poole was born in Randolph County, NC, and spent much of his adult life working in textile mills. He learned banjo as a youth and also played baseball. (He may have adopted his three-finger playing style, a version of classical banjo technique, due to a baseball accident involving his thumb.) When not working in mills, he would travel from town to town across the country, playing the banjo and taking what work he could get. He ended up settling in Spray, NC, in 1918 and married two years later. He and his brother-in-law, fiddler Posey Rorer, would often play together with other local musicians, and out of these performances grew a distinct group called the North Carolina Ramblers. Poole and Rorer teamed up with guitarist Norm Woodlieff in 1925, and the trio auditioned in New York for Columbia Records. They were accepted and cut four songs; all were successful, including the bluesy "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down." That became a bluegrass and country standard, and Poole and the Ramblers were soon a popular string band. The band's unusual sound remained consistent through several changes in personnel. As vocalist, Poole sang with a plain, uninflected style that complemented his complex banjo picking. Often, and perhaps intentionally, Poole obscured parts of the lyrics when he sang; record buyers sometimes purchased Ramblers recordings simply so that they could try to parse out what he was saying. The songs they sang were a mixture of minstrel songs, Victorian ballads, and humorous burlesques often delivered with Poole's straight-faced, dry wit. Several more songs' paths to popularity in the country tradition led through Poole's band, including "Sweet Sunny South" and "White House Blues," and his catalog is full of unexpected charmers like "If the River Was Whiskey," which deftly weaves that Irish tale of drunkenness with the then-up-to-the-minute "Hesitation Blues" (also known as "Sittin' on Top of the World"). Through the rest of the 1920s, the Ramblers recorded close to 70 sides for Columbia.
Like many country performers to follow, Poole lived a fast life; he was a hard-drinking man, rowdy and reckless. Poole was significant as one of the first country artists to gain widespread popularity through recordings, and when the Depression slowed record sales dramatically, he was hard hit. Around 1930 his self-confidence began to wane with his popularity, and he began drinking even more heavily. Scheduled to appear in a film in 1931, he unfortunately went on a bender and died of heart failure before he could get to Hollywood. After his death, Rorer (who had left the band in 1929) and guitarist Roy Harvey (who'd replaced Woodlieff around the same time) began leading the North Carolina Ramblers. (The group continued to record and perform for a quite a few years afterward.) Poole's music enjoyed renewed popularity during the folk revival of the '60s, and several reissue LPs followed. His complete recordings were issued on CD by the County label in the 1990s, Kinney Rorrer wrote and published a biography of the great bandleader and banjo player, and Poole received the full Columbia/Legacy treatment in 2005 with the three-disc box-set treasure, You Ain't Talkin' to Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music.