The great Charlie Rich was born this day 1932. Charlie Rich was one of the great Sun Records artists from the 1950’s. He never enjoyed the popularity of the others and it may have been because his music was hard to catagorize. He was all over the place, rockabilly,jazz,blues, gospel,and country. I would just as soon listen to Charlie Rich than any of the other Sun artists, he was just as great. Rather late in his career he had a couple huge hits that he is remembered for the most “Behind Closed Doors” and “The Most Beautiful Girl” its a shame he is remembered for those songs when he had a whole catelog of songs that were superior to those. His first hit was “Lonely Weekends” which reached #22 in 1960. He had a lot of great songs that just weren’t hits. He just wasn’t commercial enough but that in my mind doesn’t take away from his greatness.

He reached his peak in popularity in the early to mid 1970’s. He had acquired the nickname “The Silver Fox” by that time. He was named the Country Music Entertainer of the Year in 1974. His behavior at times was self-destructive. He had a drinking problem that was getting out of hand. At the 1975 CMA Awards when presenting the Entertainer of the Year Award instead of reading the name of the winner he took a lighter to the envelope before announcing  that the award had went to “My friend John Denver” This was looked at as an act of rebellion. Rich’s career never quite recovered from that. Charlie Rich died at the age of 62 in 1995.