Charlie
picked up the fiddle at the age of 6 and kept at it till
he could play Vivaldi and his hero, Bach. He benefited
from a series of loving violin teachers, but the last
one, Mrs. Cunningham, was rather upset when he switched
his attention to playing double bass and hanging out in
jazz clubs in his home town Oxford. Charlie's first gig
was singing in the choir at Worcester College, Oxford.
He followed this up by playing a home-made bass in a
local covers band called The Tribe.
When still at school in the sixties, Charlie appeared at
Oxford Jazz Club with Pete Brown,
trumpeter Mal Dean and violinist
Rab Spall, and this gave him a taste of
the enticing world of underground jazz. College seemed
tame after that so Charlie spent a lot of time at the
old Ronnie Scott's in London. This was
paralleled by a rising interest in blues and soul.
As a student Charlie played organ in the psychedelic
band 117. The group appeared frequently
at the Middle Earth/UFO clubs and
recorded at a legendary session with Mick Jagger
and Andrew Oldham at Olympic Studios.
By that point, Charlie was heavily into black music and
the most sensible plan seemed to go to Africa, so he
spent a year in Ghana. Highlife and traditional music
became an obsession and the next year Charlie returned
to sit in with highlife bands and study marimba.
After college he was
asked to join Pete Brown's Battered Ornaments
with Chris Spedding, Dick Hextall-Smith
and George Khan and he was introduced
to the delights of the M1 and the Blue Boar. At that
time he also started playing double bass with the
People Band - Terry Day, Mel
Davis, Lyn Dobson, Mike Figgis, Davey Payne and
they toured with the People Show. With
Davey Payne and Terry Day
he formed OMMU and they toured Holland
frequently.
OMMU then joined Ian Dury,
the eccentric art-school lyricist and Kilburn
and the Highroads were at the front of the
early 70s Pub-rock boom, free jazz meets rock and roll.
Wreckless Eric was in the same stable,
and Charlie played keyboards on his first LP.
Charlie left and
joined Ruan O'Lochlainn, Johnny Duan in
St. James' Gate, a band which soon
metamorphosed into Ronnie Lane's Slim Chance.
Charlie played mostly fiddle and accordion and lived at
Ronnie's farm, the Fishpool. He worked
on numerous albums and hung out with a lethal
combination of rock and roll A-list Clapton,
Townshend, Small Faces etc. and Shropshire
farmers. The band toured Europe by train and boat with
Clapton's band and influenced a host of future bands.
Charlie then returned to London and started playing bass
with Geraint Watkins, Ed Deane, Diz Watson
and Ron Kavana in
Juice on the Loose. They worked with Alexis
Korner, Clarence Frogman Henry and Jay
McNeely. Charlie worked with Ian
Stewart's Rocket 88, Chris Farlowe, Mose Allison
and others.
He travelled to New York with Charlie Ainley
and met Andy Warhol who adored his
luminous pink socks. He then produced Diz and
the Doormen's recently reissued
Bluecoat Man, featuring the legendary New
Orleans sax players Lee Allen and
Walter Kimble
In 1990 Charlie appeared with the People Band
in Mike Figgis ' first feature film
Stormy Monday with Sting,
Tommy Lee Jones and Melanie
Griffiths. They then re-emerged as
Mummy.
He then travelled to
Africa and met Samba Mapangala, lead
singer of the much-loved Orchestra Virunga.
This lead to Samba touring in U.K. and releasing the CD
Feet on Fire which Charlie produced. In
1991 he also worked on an album with the Morrocan
Sidi Seddiki.
After forming his own band, 251,
playing rootsy jazz, african and blues he co-founded the
cajun-inclined
Disorder on the Border
with Geraint Watkins andGary
Rickard.
Charlie had been
cultivating another career composing music for the TV
and film industries. In the 1980s he had been providing
music for documentaries and dramas. Later he worked
extensively with the animator
Erica Russell.
This collaboration lead to the ground-breaking animated
films, Feet of Song and
Triangle. Triangle was nominated for an Oscar
in 1995.
Since then he has recorded three albums and appeared at
many festivals with Chris Jagger. They
played for the Dalai Lama on one of his
visits to UK. Charlie has also appeared in the
National Theatre production of The Good
Hope, directed by Bill Bryden,
and has recently been touring Germany with David
Knopfler.
Disorder on the Border
is now enjoying a renaissance following the release of
their first CD ‘Vol 1’ on Babel Records.
In April Charlie acted as Musical Director for a
re-formed Slim Chance that performed at
the Ronnie Lane Memorial Concert at the
Albert Hall. Slim Chance backed Pete Townshend,
Sam Brown, Paul Weller, Ronnie Wood,
Chris Jagger, Glen
Matlock and others. A DVD of the event is
expected and there is a studio album in the pipeline.
Charlie has recently released his first solo CD
'Grooves and Roots' on FRW
records. He has been working on various projects in his
own Equator Studios - often with drummer Les
Morgan - recording albums with Johnny
Atkinson, John Collis and Tony Lording,
and is now writing material for the follow-up to Grooves
and Roots. Charlie is also gigging on fiddle, keyboards
and accordion with Chris Jagger and is
occasionally to be found playing bass with Diz
Watson and others.
(Picture is Charlie Hart on
piano with Ronnie Laine and Eric Clapton)
