Charlie Poole

Description: Old Time/Bluegrass banjo player, frontman of the North Carolina Ramblers

Comparisons: During the course of their career, Charlie Poole & the North Carolina Ramblers' closest counterpart were the Skillet Lickers. Poole was also, by many accounts, an early influence on the pioneers of bluegrass music, like Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt.

Starter CDs: Old Time Songs (County, 1993). You Ain't Talkin' to Me (Columbia Records, 2005).

Background Info: Charlie Poole was born in Randolph County, NC. He picked up the banjo as a teenager, and it's been speculated that his three-finger picking style was the result of a sports injury in his thumb.

As an adult, Poole spent much of his time alternately working in textile factories and traveling the country, playing his banjo. In 1918, he moved to Spray, NC, where he got married soon after. By this time, Poole and his fiddler brother Posey Rorer were playing together with a few other local musicians. Eventually a solid group of collaborators emerged in the form of the North Carolina Ramblers.

In 1925, Poole, Rorer and guitaris Norm Woodlieff traveled to New York City to audition for Columbia Records. After passing this audition, the trio recorded four songs for Columbia, including "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down," which soon became a country music standard. By the end of the decade, the Ramblers had recorded nearly 70 songs for the label, and were enjoying considerable success.

By 1930, though, the stock market had crashed an interest in luxuries like purchasing records. Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers' popularity began to drop, as Poole's propensity for drinking went on the rise. Before, in 1931, he was scheduled to appear in a movie, Charlie Poole died of heart failure. His brother and Woodlieff took the lead of the Ramblers and continued to perform for some time.

In 2005, Columbia Records released a 3-CD boxed set entitled, You Ain't Talkin to Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music. Since 1995, The Charlie Poole Music Festival has taken place in North Carolina to honor Poole's legacy.