I just got the news of my good friend Charley’s passing. I hadn’t been in touch with him in the last few months, and I had no idea he’d been that sick. This is really devastating, and I don’t know what to feel or do.
I think I met Charley in the late 70’s or early 80’s (my memory for dates is awful, and if anybody knows better please correct me). My friend Doug Cameron and I were in a band with his then girlfriend and a drummer, and Doug said that he knew a sax player from Lake Orion area who was good. When he showed up for a rehearsal, he was dressed kind of biker-like, and with his rough whiskey and cigarettes voice and his look I though “Man, here’s one tough customer”. It didn’t take long to find out this was far from the truth. Charley had an inner sweetness of spirit that came through right away, and we wound up getting along immediately. We had similar and complementary senses of humor, were both passionate about music, and were out for as much fun and adventure as we could get out of life. He proved to be a great musician too…I remember being much impressed by his ability to play two saxophones at once, in harmony, something he nabbed from one of his idols Rassan Roland Kirk. It suddenly gave us a horn section, and looked really cool onstage too.
Over the next six years or so we wound up being good friends and off-and-on housemates in various places in Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, and playing in various ensembles wherever we could. I remember living on Emmet St. in Ypsi with him and some other sordid characters, and our lives of hilarious desperation and amusement. We both had various tiny odd jobs and gigs to keep us afloat, and along with the free pizzas from a sympathetic Pizza Store girl down the street we managed to survive. There were quite a few rather ill-conceived and unsuccessful bands that we were both in…one trio that we had with a amphetamine-fueled pianist whose name escapes me wound up playing in the then very rough Cross Street Club every week for happy hour weekends. The bouncer had a ball-peen hammer that he kept on a leather cord around his wrist, to discourage any messin’ around. Charley said it was a place where they searched you for weapons at the door, and if you didn’t have any they gave you one! But we opened up for everybody in town, playing jazz tunes out of the Real Book. I think we were paid in beer and burgers and stale cigars…we were all smoking like chimneys.
At that time I was going to school at WCC, and I don’t know if Charley was registered there or not, but he was out there a good deal. The Jazz Ensemble I was in played weekly out at the Halfway Inn at East Quad in A2 and he sat in on those sessions a lot. His sax style back then was cleaner in tone than it became later, and his jazz chops were good, especially for the time. At some point we both moved from Emmet St. to Pearl St. in Ypsi, to a house we shared with Wayne Indyk, Brian Tomsic, Ray Torres and several other nefarious souls. There were many parties and good times to be had there, and we had them. We were in our 20’s and into chasing after girls, gigs, mind-altering substances and the meaning of life, usually all at the same time. Charley had a huge appetite for it all, and ebullience that made being around him a gas. He and Wayne and I started the Movie Fun Club, gathering friends and going out to the cheap matinees of cheesy Sci-Fi and Fantasy flicks, laughing and throwing popcorn around. Fantastic afternoons.
Somewhere around that time Charley hooked up with Steve Wethy and the Blue Front Persuaders, who were based in Ann Arbor and just starting to get their Retro-Swing thing together. The first gig I know of they did was out in front of Rick’s American Café during the Art Fair in A2, and Rick’s had just opened. To grab the substantial crowd outside, the owners offered the Blue Fronts a gig that night if they’d just tell the audience they were playing there, and that it was “Quarter Beer Night”. Of course they did, and the crowd swarmed down into the basement club, and the band played all night. Steve and Charley and I shared a table completely covered in full plastic beer glasses. We went through some quarters that night! The Blue Fronts caught on like wildfire in A2, fueled partly by the Blues and Jump resurgence brought on by the Blue Brothers and the like, but mostly by the fun-loving, manic personality of the band itself. On a good night they could kick some serious swingin’ ass! Again, Charley’s persona and stage presence was a key element in the band’s chemistry.
Not too long after that I was recruited to be the band’s bassist, and we started playing at a new level, both musically and professionally, than either of us had before. We had all our weekends booked, and many weekdays too (as well as sub gigs that turned up at places like Mr. Flood’s Party and others). We were doing dates throughout Michigan and Ohio, and I can think of no better band to start doing it with than that one, and no better friends to be sharing the experience with, especially Charley. Many very wild nights were had by all, and hilarious after-gig parties that I mostly remember. It’s true that we were all a pretty hard-drinking, loose-living band at that point, but given the times and our youth I think it was a pretty natural kind of thing really. Charley could always drink me under the table though, and he frequently did!
During this period we both had summer jobs being park rangers in Ypsi’s Jyro Park. It was a pretty place to be, a decent day job and had the perk of many pretty park rangerettes, who we pursued with varying degrees of success. Charley wound up hooking up with Deanna, a lovely and sweet girl who really cared deeply about him. They got closer and closer, and I was happy for them both. I remember very well the night we were playing at the Soup Kitchen in Detroit, when he told me they were going to announce their engagement later that week. He was playing beautifully that night, and sang “I’m Gonna Stay Right Here” with such feeling (and essentially directly to Deanna) that I got choked up on the stand. I was planning to drive home with them that night, but my bass wouldn’t fit in Deanna’s little car, so I rode in the van with Steve and Dennis. It was later in the morning that we found out about the horrific car crash that they were in, the result of a drunk driver in a car chase racing down the wrong way on the highway. Charley was busted up some, and Wayne (our soundman at the time) had serious internal injuries and lost his spleen, but Deanna was killed instantly. We were all devastated. I don’t think Charley ever really got over that. He was a mess for a long time…how could he not be? But even much later, you could see the change that tragedy did to him. I think the dark streak of self-destructive behavior deepened then, his drinking and related consumptions became a little more pronounced and more to cushion himself against the pain than just for fun. He recovered, kept playing, returned to the world and to mostly good humor, but it left its mark.
After I left the band, there was a while were I didn’t see Charley, but we wound up sharing space again in Ann Arbor on Michigan St., in a very large house with a crazy bomb shelter that the Blue Fronts used to record in. I think his darkest period was behind him by then, he had mellowed somewhat and was living with another girlfriend, but we still had the connection of our good friendship and shared humor. We still were able to party, and occasionally we’d stumble across the street to Arwulf’s, either to entertain him with some freeform sax duets (I should mention that I don’t really play sax at all) or just to jabber and listen to Arwulf’s amazing music collection, which we had plundered before in search of obscure Swing tunes in the earlier days of the Persuader’s career. I do remember a few instances of excess during that time…one night I was woken up by an amazing cacophony downstairs in the living room. I stumbled down there and found Charley, wearing stereo headphones, playing Wagner’s “Flight Of The Valkeries” at top volume and waving his arms wildly, conducting into the air! Only problem was he had neglected to actually plug the headphones in! I treasure moments like that though. After our house broke up, we drifted apart, and I would only see him briefly and infrequently over the years. Just last year he contacted me by email and we wrote back and forth for a bit, but one of us (probably me) dropped the ball and I hadn’t heard from him in a bit. I’d just been thinking of reconnecting again when Steve sent me this news.
There was so much I admired and liked about him…he was a master storyteller, specializing in the tall and preposterous tale that was usually based in fact; a gifted artist, who could whip out an off-the-cuff comic or portrait without thinking about it; a great musician and musicologist with a vast knowledge of Jazz and R&B; and a cat with a fantastic imagination, who could entertain himself and everyone around him with nothing but the contents of his beautifully twisted mind. And a really good friend with a huge soul and a warm and generous spirit. I’d always hoped we’d have a little more time to be together and talk, and I’ll always regret I didn’t work harder to make that happen. I feel like a large part of what made me myself has left the planet. Charley, if you’re still out there somewhere, good luck, man, we loved you. I hope you have a fantastic journey, and a sublime destination.
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