Biographical
An excellent
account of his life & career in
this obituary from
The Times of London
A 2001 interview with Charlie on the
fRoots website in which
he discusses his career
In Canada, there
seems to have been very little notice of his passing. Ken Stowar of
CIUT FM had a personal recollection on air, and David Dacks, also of
CIUT, wrote
an appreciation of Gillett on Exclaim.
Photo
at right by Philip Ryalls
 Radio
tributes, etc.
Some tribute shows; some replays of his old programs; some
interviews with him. Note that most BBC shows are available to listen online for a week after their
original broadcast. Some of the original shows have been removed... "Expiry date"
is listed below.
Some of Charlie's old radio shows:
"Charlie
Gillett's World of Music"
Charlie broadcast this show over the BBC World Service for a
number of years. Shorter and more tightly focused on "world
music" than his 2 hour programs, it was the way many people
around the world came to know him.
This program,
originally from Feb. 2009 played "mountain music" from around
the world: Ukraine, Peru, Turkey, the U.S., Kyrgystan, Tibet,
and Tuva.
Overlaid are occasional reader tributes. The original forum
thread on this episode, including Charlie's comments, is posted
here.
Online
until end of day Mar. 28
On radio with Ry Cooder
Two old radio shows from Captial Radio
from around 1982/83. The second show is with Brad of the group
The Specials
Sun Records
Documentary.
A 1973 documentary by Charlie
on the famous Memphis record company. Documentary is the first
hour of the show. (Online through Mar. 27)
The Sound of
New Orleans
Another classic Charlie
documentary, this time from 1976, also covers the first hour of
this show. (Online through Mar. 28)
Some tributes to him:
A Saturday night tribute.
(Click the "listen" icon under "DJ Ritu")
Charlie's old Saturday night radio
slot broadcast a 2-hour tribute to him. A number of guests who
knew Charlie well talk about him, and play their selections of
"Charlie's Island Discs".
Online until
2am, Mar. 28
The Strand
BBC World Service program broadcast a 1
hour tribute to Charlie on Mar. 27. (Online until Apr 3)
Mark Lamarr
One of Charlie's own favourite radio shows
was Mark Lamarr's "God's Jukebox". His March 27 show features
sections honouring Charlie and Alex Chilton who died on the same
day as Charlie
(Online until Apr. 3)
Mariza:
"Smile" (Video)
The fado star, whose career Charlie helped, performs the song in
honour of her friend.
The
following are not on the BBC, and have no expiry time set:
Two shows
are archived on
Far Side Music, a website run by Paul
Fisher, a Japanese music expert. There is a recording of
Charlie's May 12, 2001 Radio London show on which Paul Fisher
was his Radio Ping Pong guest. He also did a Mar. 24, 2010
tribute to Charlie, along with guest Howard Male.
A recording of one of his 1977 "Honky Tonk" radio show from
1977 with Ian Dury as guest. (Link is at the end of the
obituary).
A recording from one of his shows on Capital Radio in the
1980's, with the theme, "Letters". Linked on this page (Linked
at end of article)
Also, watch a little
video of one of his last radio shows, featuring live
performance by one of his favourite groups, Fad Freddy's Drop.
Click in the upper right sid, "Ray Ray", in session, World on 3.
A
2007 video interview with him as he discussed his career and
Oval Records business.
Music from Charlie's funeral (on YouTube)
Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam
Guebrou,
The
Homeless Wanderer
Read Charlie's take on her music
here
Leadbelly,
Midnight
Special
A few years ago, Charlie posted on his
forum:
"If you really want to annoy me when I'm gone, play Joan Baez
at the farewell... But if you want to make me happy, have
somebody sing Midnight Special, the first song I learned to play
(but never well enough to dare to do it in public)"
Johnnie
Allan,
The
Promised Land
Charlie recounted the first time he heard
this Cajun version of Chuck Berry's hit while he was in
Louisiana looking for music for his brand-new Oval Records:
"We're playing pool in a bar and the juke box is just playing
whatever it's playing, and suddenly this version of Promised
Land comes on which nearly makes me push my cue through the
baize."
Mbilia Bel,
Eswi Yo Wapi
One of the frequent contributors to
Charlie's forum, Howard Male co-hosted a tribute linked on the
"Far Side" link above closed that show with this song."As I
thought it was such a perfect and joyous piece of music to go
out on."
A personal
appreciation of Charlie from Virginia Brooks:
When I heard
of Charlie's death, the first person I called was Virginia who I
knew had been a friend of Charlie's for many years. I know how hard
Charlie's death has been for her, but asked her if she would
like to write some of her thoughts about hear late friend. This is
what she sent me:
Charlie's death,
like Charlie's life, alters our lives absolutely. Charlie was a
gentle humble man who followed his heart in the music he
introduced to his audience. He could not be bought with fame or
fortune. His soothing voice was backed by a profound knowledge
of his greatest passion, music... all kinds of music... but for
many it was his interest in promoting music of the world that
got so many hooked on his various radio shows. And for him radio
was the medium he loved. I LOVE radio... I will always love
radio and it's a measure of Charlie's genius to have one foot in
radio and the other in the internet.
It was my great
fortune to meet Charlie in Zimbabwe in 1987. I had been
traveling the country using public transport and when I heard
this handsome gentleman checking out of the hotel at the Great
Zimbabwe Ruins, I approached him with the idea of hitching a
ride back to Harare. He and his wonderful wife Buffy welcomed me
to join them. This is the kind of guy he was. In Harare we
haunted record shops and clubs in the townships for the latest
hits. We were to meet up with Buffy at a selected spot but she
wasn't there. I believe it might be the only time that I saw
Charlie truly distraught, for Buffy was his great strength and
counsel. We exchanged phone numbers... no email back then. So
when I returned to London glowing with this new found world of
music, I phoned Charlie and begged him to take me to Sterns
music store so I could buy 10 of his top recommendations.
No problem... off we went. (I ended up buying bought 25, not
10!) The rest is history as they say.
Whenever I passed
through London, which was often over the next 20 years, I popped
in to see Charlie and Buffy at their big old house where Oval
Records had begun in their basement. I always left with music
suggestions and warm feelings for a man whose schedule was jam
packed. The amount of time he spent listening and researching
what he heard is staggering. And I was always impressed that
Charlie found time to eat well and stay fit with exercise. It
was a cruel blow for him to be struck down with ill health at
such a young age.
As the tributes
pour in from around the world, it is clear that Charlie always
found the time to listen, learn, encourage, and share his vast
vast knowledge with friends, family as well as with complete
strangers. I remember speaking with him when the Saturday night
show ended and there was simply no one to fill his shoes; the
show was replaced with dance music and he was sad about that
fact.
The wonderful
thing about a life like Charlie's is that he has not taken his
spirit with him. His spirit lives as surely as the tracks we
play... Youssou n'Dour, Mariza, Ian Dury, Mavis Staples, Johnny
Cash, Chango Spasiuk... His spirit lives in the example he set
in the way we treat one another: with dignity and respect,
without prejudice, without judgment. His is a great legacy and
though I think he did know that he was much admired, there was
never the slightest hint of arrogance for what he had achieved.
I will be forever grateful to the hand of fate which led me to
Charlie, and ultimately to the radio show I presented and
dedicated to him here in Toronto in November 2009. I sent the
playlist to Charlie and received his affirmation.
My appreciation of Charlie:
The piece below is adapted from
one I wrote in May, 2006 after Charlie left his long-running weekly
Radio London show, "Sound of the City" due to health problems. He
did keep up his weekly half hour World Service show, and later
shared the 2 hour "World on 3" BBC Radio 3 radio show with two other
DJs. In January of 2010, he left that show following a stroke.
Ironically, about a year ago, Charlie found the original version of
this page I had written in 2006, and emailed me to let me know he was
still doing those other shows (which of course I listened to
regularly, so I updated the page to reflect that).
 In 1972, while living in Tokyo for a year,
I found myself at times trying to find a balance between two cultures. One way
I connected psychologically with "back home" was
through the music I knew from there: American R&B, rock & roll, soul,
and the like. The only place to
hear that music was the American Forces radio station,
which didn’t quite fill the gap. (Or, perhaps more accurately,
had its own gaps).
I not only wanted to hear the music, it
was a time when I was interested in learning more about
the music, its artists, its roots; just where did it all come
from? Improbably, it was in Japan where I found and bought a
book entitled
Sound of the City, written by British
writer Charlie Gillett.
The book had its origins in Gilllet's
Columbia University Masters Thesis ("I wrote the thesis just as
a way of rationalising to myself that I hadn't entirely misspent
my youth listening to records to no purpose.”), and it became
perhaps the first serious exploration into how rock & roll had
evolved out of its origins in the rural, regional musics
(especially black music) of the
U.S., and was ultimately born in the
midst of the new dynamics of the post-war urban environment in
the U.S., in places like Chicago, New York, New Orleans,
Memphis, etc.
The book is now recognized as
a classic -- still in print, it's sold more than 250,000 copies.
A few years later, Gillett wrote another
book, Making Tracks, an excellent profile of Atlantic
Records, one of the most influential and innovative post-war
American record companies.
However, those were his last books, and although I greatly admired
his knowledge of, and taste in music, I lost track of him for
the next 15 years or so. In that time, I eventually found my way
to a different kind of roots music: music from Africa and
elsewhere in the world. It was music that was not always easy to
find (although at least here in Toronto, we had shows like "Global
Rhythms" and "Karibuni" on CIUT FM), and not easy to learn much
about. I needed the equivalent of a world music Sound of the
City.
However, in the mid-90's, the
Internet became a source for this kind of information, and one
day, to my great shock, and even greater pleasure, I found that
Charlie Gillett was doing much the same thing for world music as
he'd done for R&B and rock & roll; BUT now on radio and
the Internet rather than
publishing.
He had a weekly radio show on
the BBC's Radio London, which was available online, and
frequently archived which I listened to almost every week for
many years. The show was unique among all the radio shows I've
listened to on the radio or online for its eclecticism and his wealth
of knowledge, joy and humour. He played music from around the
world, and his real love (like mine) seemed to be African music, but
he played anything he thought was good and interesting, and if
he thought so, then it was probably worth listening to (and perhaps
buying). He continued to play American country and roots music,
along with the music more widely considered "world music". (It
was on one of his shows that I re-discovered, and learned to
appreciate Johnny Cash). I was happy to find we also shared
dislikes (English folk music, and I laughed and agreed when
he was appalled that his studio guest Mariza, whom he had
championed for many years, selected Frank Sinatra as one of her
picks!)
That Mariza segment was from
my favourite feature on most
of his shows: his "Radio Ping Pong" segment where he
invited guests to the studio. They would chat, but more
importatnly, they played musical selections inspired by and in reaction to the
other's picks. There were some great moments. One of my favourite programs of all time was his Christmas Day broadcast
with Mavis Staples.
For a number of years,
several of those shows (including Mavis's) were available on the Mondomix website; they are no longer, but I'm hopeful they will
be restored.
Charlie has championed a
number of Canadian-based artists; most recently Kobotown, and
among his favourites who were also his studio guests were
Lhasa, who of course tragically died herself in January, 2010,
and K'Naan.
He first began playing (and
raving about) K'Naan when he was virtually unknown in Europe. In
fact, the first time I contacted him was after his first play of
K'Naan's music in 2005. I wrote just to point out the correct
pronunciation of K'Naan's name. He (understandably from its
spelling) pronounced it like "ka-nahn" He wrote back, thanked me,
and encouraged me to post comments in his
website
forum. I've done so occasionally, but have also used it as a
source of information regularly for years).
He continued to play K'Naan
(and picked him as his "Bright Hope for 2006"), and finally had
him
as a guest in May of 2006. The same night, K'Naan was
playing a concert in London, however, during the broadcast, Charlie
told K'Naan that he wasn't feeling well, and would have to miss
his show. It turned out to be his last Saturday night show. He
ended up in hospital with an auto-immune condition, and he
finally decided that he had to leave the show for health
reasons.
It was a huge loss to me and
many others around the world; although he kept up his World
Service show, it wasn't the same. He was later able to share a
new program, "World on 3" for the past couple of years which
captured a lot of the spirit of his earlier show.
However, now there will be no
more Charlie on radio or elsewhere.
While I will greatly miss
him, I am very appreciative of what he offered: wonderful music and
a wonderful spirit.
And my condolences to his
wife, family, friends and to all those who knew him personally.
I understand he had been working
on his memoirs, which apparently might be advanced enough that they can be published
at some point.
Photo above: my very-well used copy of Charlie's first book. Note
the 95 cent price tag on the spine.
BBC World Service on Charlie
For many years,
Charlie did a half-hour world music program, "World of Music" on
the BBC World Service, which attracted listeners and fans from
around the world. Late on the night Charlie died, the arts
correspondent was putting together a piece on him. It may be
because he couldn't find many people in the UK to talk to at 1
or 2 in the morning that he looked for some North Americans to
talk about Charlie. So the piece features some comments from
Banning Eyre of Afropop Worldwide and me.
Click here for a
5 minute mp3 clip
On the next page, read a
small number of the tributes posted on Charlie's forum
|
Charlie
was a giant in the music world.
On
this page: