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Charles Cleveland Poole was born in March of 1892 in the heart of the cotton mill belt in North Carolina. His father worked in a mill, and, by the time he was twelve, so did Charlie, changing bobbins 60 hours a week for a $3 wage. But Poole had a talent for singing and playing the banjo that freed him, for a while, from the noise and lint of the spinning room.
Charlie got away early, wandering as far west as Montana and as far north as Canada, busking at train stations, courthouses, and general stores. He picked up a couple musicians on the road, and they played dances and fiddle contests. He got married and fathered a son, but that didn’t take, got married again, and settled, more or less, in Spray, North Carolina. The best paying job he ever had was running a still for the local moonshiner, Homer Philpott.
In 1925 Charlie and his band, The North Carolina Ramblers, went to New York City to try their hand at recording. They passed an audition for Columbia Records and made a 78 of "Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blues," which sold an astounding 102,000 copies. Poole and his band only got $75 total for their effort, but his career as a recording artist and a professional musician was firmly established. Between his first and second sessions for Columbia he sold about a half-million records.
Riding on their reputation, the Ramblers played schoolhouses, theaters, barn dances and speakeasies. Charlie galvanized the act with somersaults and buck dancing, and, for good measure, would throw in jokes, stories, and humorous asides. Meanwhile, his wife back in Spray never knew where he was or when he was coming home. From time to time she’d get a telegram, and then one day, without warning, he'd just stumble into the house carrying a sugar sack full of money he’ d made on the road.
But by the spring of 1931, with record sales crippled by the Great Depression, Poole’s career seemed to be over. He found himself back in Spray, working in the miil, and his drinking took on marathon proportions. His wife pleaded with him to restrain himself, but her attempts were futile. He collapsed on the street and died in an upstairs bedroom in his sister’s log house. He was 39 years old.
(extract from Kinney Rorrer’s biographical essay in the High Wide & Handsome booklet)
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