Charlie Poole

Charlie Poole (22 March 1892 - 21 May 1931) was an American banjo player. Poole was born in Spray (now part of Eden), Rockingham County, in the northern part of North Carolina, near the Virginia border. He spent much of his adult life working in textile mills. He learned banjo as a youth and also played baseball. His three-fingered playing technique was the result of a baseball accident. He had made a bet that he could catch a baseball without a glove but closed his hand too soon. The ball broke his thumb and resulted in a permanent arch in his right hand. He bought his first good banjo, an Orpheum No. 3 Special, with profits from his moonshine still. Later, he appeared in the 1929 catalog of the Gibson Company, promoting their banjo. Charlie Poole and his brother-in-law, fiddler Posey Rorer, formed a trio with guitarist Norm Woodlieff in 1925 called the North Carolina Ramblers. The group auditioned in New York for Columbia Records. After landing a contract, they recorded the hugely successful "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down Blues." This song sold over 102,000 copies at a time when there were estimated to be only 600,000 phonographs in the South, according to Poole’s biographer Kinney Rorrer. The band was paid $75 for the session. For the next five years, Poole and the Ramblers was a very popular band. The band's distinctive sound remained consistent though several members came and left, including Posey Rorer and Norm Woodlieff. In all, the band recorded over 60 songs for Columbia Records during the 1920s. These hits included: "Sweet Sunny South", "White House Blues", “He Rambled”, and “Take a Drink on Me”. In addition to being a talented musician, Poole was a fast living and hard drinking man. His life ended after a 13-week drinking bender. According to some reports, he was disheartened by the slump in record sales due to the Depression. Others credit his binge as a celebration for landing an offer to go to Hollywood and provide music for the first talking motion pictures. Poole’s music enjoyed a revival in the 1960s and had been remade by a number of modern recording artists, such as John Mellencamp (“White House Blues”) and the Chieftains (“Don’t Let the Deal Go Down”). Kinney Rorrer penned a biography of Charlie Poole, entitled “Ramblin’ Blues: The Life and Songs of Charlie Poole” and Columbia issued a three-CD box set of his music, called You Ain't Talkin' to Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music. A documentary of his life, tentatively titled “North Carolina Rambler” is in production by George Goehl and is planned for a 2007 release.