Smooth As Silk Charlie Rich Is Remembered As Having One Of The Warmest Voices Country Music Ever Had

Charlie Rich was known as the “Silver Fox” of country music. The label originated from the color of his hair, which started turning gray in his 20s, but the name stuck because he truly was as smooth a singer as country music has ever produced.

Rich died Tuesday night in a Louisiana hotel room, from what a coroner described as a blood clot in his lung. He was 62 years old and his best recording years had long since passed, but his influence lives on every time you hear a “countrypolitan” ballad out of Nashville.

Rich was the defining figure of the “countrypolitan” sound - a creamy, uptown-slick, orchestrated style of music that surged through Nashville in the ‘70s. Rich was at his peak at that time, dominating the country charts - and crossing over to the pop charts - with the romantic “Behind Closed Doors,” “The Most Beautiful Girl” (which topped the pop charts), “There Won’t Be Anymore,” “A Very Special Love Song” and “Every Time You Touch Me (I Get High).”

Even today, it’s rare for a country artist to cross over to the Top 40 pop charts, yet Rich did it regularly between 1973 and 1975. He became so popular that he rose to the status of arena headliner. He once played the Providence Civic Center, where he headlined a bizarre bill with Playboy playmate Barbie Benton (then singing country music), but salvaged the show with his transfixing ballads and his eloquent artistry at the piano.

“I remember him as a great musician,” Chet Atkins said to Nashville writer Joe Edwards Wednesday. “He was one of the greatest singer-musicians that I ever knew.”

Although his satiny ballads might have belied it, Rich was also a rock ‘n’ roller early in his career. The Arkansas-born Rich was a late entry in the Memphis-based Sun Records stable, which gave rise to Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison. Rich had a rockabilly flair and played piano on a number of Sun sessions, plus wrote songs for Cash and Lewis. Rich later scored national rock hits in the early ‘60s with “Lonely Weekends” (which became a bar-band staple and is still covered by garage-rock acts today) and “Mohair Sam.”

However, Rich never adjusted well to fame. He battled alcoholism and often shied away from the media. And he never recovered from the embarrassing moment on national television in 1975 when, at the Country Music Association awards, he announced the Entertainer of the Year (John Denver), but burned the envelope in derision.

Rich’s own career started to go up in flames after that, though it was revived briefly in 1990 when Mark Knopfler’s Notting Hillbillies recorded his “Feel Like Goin’ Home.” Generally speaking, Rich died on the downswing, but that’s not how he should be remembered. He had one of the warmest, most intimate voices that country music ever produced.