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Rich References
Under the Influence of Charlie Rich's "Just Like Old Times"
From Paul Mark:
In the spirit of acknowledging influences, we just released a live-to-video cover of Just Like Old Times, a seldom-heard chestnut recorded by Charlie Rich back in the late 1960s before he hit it big.
Rich’s uncanny vocal talent and piano style, firmly set in blues and gospel, along with his brooding songwriting, shook me as a kid, and his music became a persistent inspiration. His bone-deep, much-covered originals, like No Headstone on My Grave, Feel Like Going Home and Who Will the Next Fool Be leave a mark on anyone who writes lyrics. His best original songs were all penned long before he was famous.
I came upon Rich’s version of Just Like Old Times many years ago and it’s been on my list of warm-up tunes ever since. There’s a concise simpatico between the church-meets country counterpoint of the keyboard and the lyrics that slide from nostalgic pining to that gothic wind-up in the final breakdown verse. When I play it I usually pause to lament that I’ll never deliver a song as good as Charlie Rich. But few ever did.
Outwardly cordial but privately reticent and moody, Charlie drank a good amount of gin in his day, sadly (check out his confessional gem Sitting and Thinking). And for some fans it never quite registered that he died in 1992 at 62. Memphis friends tell me that Rich is regularly spotted hitchhiking with Elvis just outside the city limits.
The original
Rich’s recording of Just Like Old Times appeared on Set Me Free (1968), his first album on the Epic label.
The countrypolitan sound was well established in Nashville by then (Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, Jim Reeves, George Jones, etc.). But Rich considered himself a jazz musician first and had always steered away from straight country. A jazz-schooled pianist with a velvety, masculine vocal delivery, born and raised in Arkansas? With a recalcitrant, reticent personality?…Try sorting all that out.
Since his first records with Sam Phillips on Sun, Rich’s robust, eclectic talents had been recognized across the industry. And in 1959 he had a hit with the self-penned Lonely Weekends, which sure sounded a lot like an Elvis outtake. But after years of writing and recording on several labels Rich’s big follow-up hit never arrived.
Then came the prophetically titled Set Me Free. In the 1960s Producer Billy Sherrill and Owen Bradley (along with studio cats like Chet Atkins, Floyd Cramer and Pig Robbins, frequently uncredited in liner notes) had come up with the countrypolitan style of sophisticated Nashville production. Sweeping string sections, full choruses, tinkling lounge piano, deep reverb, all topped with soaring soul vocals. Hit-maker Sherrill convinced Rich that his next success was waiting for him on Epic if he’d take a headfirst dive into the corporate countrypolitan sound.
Rich was willing to try anything so he gingerly stepped into Sherill’s fat, orchestrated country melange. Set Me Free on Epic, which included Just Like Old Times, sold enough to warrant several follow up LPs, during which the formula was heightened and perfected. The Fabulous Charlie Rich LP on Epic is the middle step.
The bomb finally hit in 1973 with the Sherrill-produced Behind Closed Doors (right). You know you saw that record cover among the cassettes (8-tracks?) in your crazy uncle’s car, right?
With lush production and smart song selection, Behind Closed Doors included two smash crossover hits, The Most Beautiful Girl and the title cut, that established Rich almost overnight as one of the biggest stars of the 1970s in any musical genre. At this point the moody Rich was not even playing piano on the sessions (far as I can tell it was blind legend Pig Robbins laying down the piano session tracks). Rich’s wife Margaret Ann has said that by then Charlie lost interest in the studio time required to build arrangements.
True there were some who thought the country-meets-pop sound of Behind Closed Doors was overly commercial and syrupy. I just liked hearing Rich sing, and the songwriting is superb on several of the tracks on this career-making LP.
Songwriters
Just Like Old Times was written by Papa Don Schroeder (a Florida-based DJ and sometime record producer) and organist Spooner Oldham (left), a familiar figure to those who read liner notes. Alabama-born Oldham wrote and played on dozens of sensational soul tracks, including prime-time albums by Aretha, Wilson Pickett and Percy Sledge. He later recorded regularly with Neil Young, among many others.
Rich references
Aside from his records, the best place to learn about Charlie Rich are the masterful essays by music writer Peter Guralnick from his classic collections, Feel Like Going Home (1971) and Lost Highway (1979, original faded cover shown from my bookshelf). Rich wrote the classic song Feel Like Going Home after his interviewer friend Guralnick’s book title.
Guralnick’s research revealed some of the biographical darkness that informs Rich’s life and music even after he became world famous in the mid-70s as a crowd-pleasing crooner. After devouring Guralnick’s books as a kid musician I wanted to become both Charlie Rich and an investigative journalist.
