Bobby Charles - Last Train To Memphis

 

Bobby Charles — Last Train To Memphis 2LP

Cameos by Willie Nelson, Neil Young, Fats Domino, Clarence "Frogman" Henry, Sonny Landreth, Dan Penn, Delbert McClinton, and Maria Muldaur dot this legendary songwriter's definitive lifetime statement, cut in his reclusive years, and no other album captures his "lost years" better than this collection of tracks spanning the years 1971-2003, all bearing the common thread of being written and produced by Bobby Charles.

This is more than just a compilation. The quality of Charles' work remained consistent in tone and wit over the album's span of three decades, just as he remained true to himself. "Everyday," recorded in 1975, flows organically into "Don't Make a Fool of Yourself," cut in 1997. Last Train to Memphis unfolds as a true album, built from Charles' life.

Throughout the course of that life, he crossed paths with many stellar musicians who would champion him and record for him over the decades. After recording his one U.S. commercial LP release in the last century, 1972's Bobby Charles, with Dr. John, Ben Keith, and members of The Band, he retreated to his preferred state of obscurity in his hometown of Abbeville, Louisiana. But he was always writing — and recording. Indeed, his Rice ‘n' Gravy Records partnered with international labels in the ‘80s and ‘90s to release four albums.

‍By the turn of the 21st century, Charles had stacks of recordings, but almost zero recognition in his homeland. He'd lost nearly everything when fire consumed his Abbeville home in the mid-‘90s. Still, the tracks he'd been quietly recording since the ‘70s — with the likes of Willie Nelson, Neil Young, Fats Domino, Clarence "Frogman" Henry, Sonny Landreth, Delbert McClinton, Dan Penn, Spooner Oldham, and Maria Muldaur sitting in on the sessions — were there to be dusted off. And so Charles joined forces with Jim Bateman and Ben Keith to craft the definitive statement on his years of "inactivity," on his craft, his life, and his vision.

‍It's fitting that, as Bateman wrote in the original liner notes, the album's title pays tribute to Peter Guralnick's Elvis Presley biography of the same name, for Elvis embodied a primal element of Charles himself, the rock and roll rebel. Charles, too, had been mistaken as a Black singer by listeners in the ‘50s. And all of his songs had a genre-blending element, mixing soul, R&B, and country — from his first single for Chess Records in 1955, "Later, Alligator," ultimately remade into a hit by Bill Haley and His Comets, to "(I Don't Know Why) But I Do," which he penned for Allen Toussaint and Clarence "Frogman" Henry, to "Walking to New Orleans," written for Fats Domino. Over time, Charles was more and more content to have others sing his work. But that gave his voice short shrift.

‍As Bob Dylan quipped on his Theme Time Radio Hour many decades later, "My old buddy, Robert Charles Guidry, was better known as Bobby Charles, and he was more successful as a songwriter than a singer. And that's a sin, because he's a hell of a singer. He's got one of the most melodious voices ever transmuted into a piece of vinyl, matter of fact."

‍That will ring truer than ever with our reissue of Last Train to Memphis, which makes the album available on vinyl for the first time. Over two LPs, the vinyl edition spotlights Charles' inimitable, melodious rasp over tracks from disc one of the original CD release. It's in those 15 tracks, which Charles considered the album proper, that the soul of Last Train to Memphis lives.

 

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1. Last Train To Memphis

2. The Legend Of Jolie Blonde

3. I Spent All My Money Lovin' You

4. String Of Hearts

5. I Wonder

6. Everyday

7. Don't Make A Fool Of Yourself

8. Homesick Blues

9. Forever And Always

10. The Sky Isn't Blue Anymore

11. Full Moon On The Bayou

12. What Are We Doing

13. Sing

14. Goin' Fishing

15. See You Later Alligator

16. The Jealous Kind

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