I love Charlie Rich, and "I Can't Go On" is one of his best, but even the Jerry Kennedy sessions collected on Fully Realized (among Rich's favorites of his long career) are maddeningly inconsistent. Now I like "Mohair Sam" as much as the next guy -- and sure it was a big hit -- but there's no excuse for all those other Dallas Frazier songs. Yuck!! At least Charlie was interested all the way through. When I went to SXSW ten years ago Koch was reissuing a bunch of his albums & I got CDs of Set Me Free, The Fabulous Charlie Rich and Big Boss Man. I'm delighted to own them, but I'd be hard-pressed to recommend any of them to someone not already on the bandwagon and who either (a) has plenty of disposable income or (b) doesn't mind buying a very short album where half the tracks aren't very good. That said, the good tracks are frickin' fabulous and worth the price of admission. But the difference is painfully obvious between the songs he cares about (his and his wife's, covers he chose like "Nice and Easy" and "Big Boss Man") the ones that are on the album because Billy Sherrill had a piece of the publishing. When he's on he's the sort of singer who inspired the cliché "I'd pay to hear him sing the phone book," but when he's singing crap like "San Francisco Is a Lonely Town" it's Jeezus, start singin' the phone book already!
'Jaynestown'
Buffista Music II: Wrath of Chaka Khan
There's a lady plays her fav'rite records/On the jukebox ev'ry day/All day long she plays the same old songs/And she believes the things that they say/She sings along with all the saddest songs/And she believes the stories are real/She lets the music dictate the way that she feels.
where else can you hear a Nobel Peace Prize nominee sing with such glee:
You obviously don't spend a lot of time at Jimmy Carter's house . . . .
Man, I love me some Charlie Rich, too, but I gotta agree with the gist of Joe's post: the man had some erratic material.
I had a big crush on Charlie Rich when I was a little girl. I think he may have been my first crush based only on voice. mmm the Silver Fox.
I couldn't make it all the way through that. That is a cry out for a mercy killing.
I couldn't get it to come alive for me.
it took a long time for me and WMP had to upgrade and blah blah blah.
It's awful and awesome, all at once.