Rockie Charles - Born for You

I have been trying to give everyone a little room to do some listening and catch up on the posts while I take stock of where we are and what's next. I had intimated that I was headed for an instrumental interlude but then I decide to do some more New Orleans stuff, and offer up some guys not widely known outside of the area as well as some more big-dog classics, including the big man from the ninth ward.

Chances are that unless you have been to New Orleans, you do not know who Rockie Charles was. Rockie was one of those local guys who was always around, always fit like an old comfortable set of levi's, but never seemed to get noticed much even when the Rounder folks came around and made New Orleans music fashionable again. Too bad too because I always loved Rockie's singing, he is sort of a cross between Earl King and Al Green.

Sadly, Rockie passed away a couple of years ago, leaving us very little recorded legacy. There has never been a compilation of his early 45's and the majority of his later output is self produced on low budget burned copies that I've yet to talk myself into buying. This one album on Carlo Dita's Orleans label is the closest thing to a full professional production.

Rockie was born Charles Merrick down in Boothville, LA, a tiny fishing town in Plaquemines Parish by the mouth of the Mississippi in 1942. His father was a fisherman who played some guitar in local juke joints. He was moved to New Orleans ninth ward at age 13, where he stayed with an aunt and attended both public and music schools for a short time. He dropped out of school in the 10th grade and moved back down to Venice, LA to work the boats as a deckhand until he got his tugboat pilot's license on his 18th birthday.

Charles worked as a tug captain on the river but kept his toe in the water musically with occasional gigs, until he finally moved back to New Orleans and formed a band called the Gadges to give music a shot as a career. The band was fairly popular about town through the 60's and late in the decade relocated to Nashville where they were put on tours opening for folks like Percy Sledge, O.V. Wright, Otis Redding and Joe Simon.

Rockie had been turned down after auditions with Toussaint and Bartholomew so it was left to Senator Jones to cut his first singles in the mid 60's. There apparently exists a string of quality singles on various small labels from the mid 60's thru early 70's but good luck ever finding even one. By the early 70's disco music pushed the current crop of R&B artists into the background just as the British Invasion had a decade earlier. Lack of work sent Charles back to the tugboats for a decade, then he built his own oyster trawler from scratch and fished for another decade.

In the mid 90's Rockie tired of life on the river and put an add in Offbeat to solicit gigs and a band. This led to his meeting Orleans records Carlo Dita and this 1996 album was the result. Look closely at the back cover and you will see the prow of another 40 foot oyster trawler that Rockie was building from scrap lumber in his own back yard (I wonder what ever happened to that boat?).