Charlie Oldham

Charlie Oldham Passes Away - Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Our good friend Charlie Oldham, the revered host of our great Saturday afternoon American party music program, Stacks 'O Tracks, passed away at approximately 4:00 a.m. in a Boston hospital where he had been since his liver transplant a few weeks before. Charlie had been there in critical condition after suffering medical complications with his heart in the days after the transplant surgery.

Community and listener support for Charlie had built strongly in the months leading up to his transplant, and continued during the difficult period of his hospitalization. Members of the WERU family of listeners and volunteers who wish to send a card to Charlie's wife, Bonnie, may do so to the following address:

Bonnie Oldham, 149 Camden Road, Lincolnville, ME 04849

One only had to listen to an edition of Stacks 'O Tracks to learn a great deal about Charlie. He loved great and wild music, and loved sharing it with the WERU audience. He loved the high-octane guitar riffs and edgy lyrics that make Saturday afternoon from 3:00 - 5:00 "party time" on WERU. He loved fast talk, the clever turn of phrase and witty banter. He loved to laugh and make others laugh. He loved Community Radio. Above all, Charlie loved Bonnie.

And we loved Charlie back and will miss him terribly.

A memorial gathering/celebration for Charlie will be held on Sunday, June 19 at the Belfast Boathouse (down on the waterfront, next to the park with the gazebo), beginning at 11 a.m. Thanks to John Hillman Waters, Deb Melnikas and Mark Elwin for putting together the wonderful tribute edition of Stacks 'o Tracks on May 28 .

Party on, Charlie!

This collage was created by Sanguine Fromage, who will be co-hosting Sound Travels every other Saturday for the rest of the summer. She offers up this sentiment with the collage, "I hope Charlie has internet access up there... he made us laugh so many times, I'd like to return the favor."

We've also included an article from The Camden Herald about Charlie and a transcript of the Notes From the Electronic Cottage which aired Thursday, June 2, 2005 in tribute to Charlie.

Good-bye Charlie Oldham

By DAVID GRIMA

Charlie Oldham of Lincolnville died Tuesday, May 24, 2005, in Boston, following a liver transplant that did not work out.

His death is a tragedy, as many deaths are. I am writing about him this week because he hosted one of the best radio shows in the State of Maine and, as such, he stood for something I think is very important.

Every Saturday from 3 to 5 p.m. on WERU, Charlie hosted Stacks o' Tracks, a show devoted to some of the best classic rock and roll, and which he often described as party music.

He had a ferociously delicious way of talking about the music he played, and was devoted to the use of an overblown radio-announcer cliché style which was nevertheless entirely original to him. He would talk about "crawling, battered and bleeding, up the next half hour" of his show, for example. It was a kind of hyperbolic speech utterly suited to the music he played and the creative atmosphere he fostered on his show, and he invented it entirely himself.

The first time I heard him talking between records (forgive me if I still think of records) I decided Charlie must be some fierce kind of guy. But then he would make these utterly tender remarks about sending out the next tune to his dearly beloved wife, and I suddenly figured him out. I was a devoted Charlie O. listener ever after.

There is something significant about the time slot his show occupied.

The ragged end of a Saturday afternoon can be difficult to endure for people of my particular temperament, especially on a dark and cold Maine winter day, or in a long wet spring. Too much quiet, a gathering gloom, and a sense that this precious day off work is starting to run away in the sands of time. Too easy to reach for a can of beer and begin a wasteful slide into Saturday evening.

So right on the button at 3 p.m., when things would indeed begin to slide, when winter light was already dying in the streets, I'd head straight for WERU on the dial (forgive me if I still think of radios as having dials) and there would be Charlie O, breathing life back into the faltering day and tiding things over for a while.

It has long been my criticism of mainstream music radio that, no matter how much any musician might have recorded over his or her career, most stations will only play one of two of the most popular. It's a double disservice. First, we never hear the rest of the body of work, but we also begin to tire of what is really good stuff that is nevertheless getting worn out by overexposure.

For example, Gerry Rafferty's fine career in the 1970s is almost exclusively represented on commercial radio by just two songs, "Stuck in the Middle With You" and the magnificent "Baker Street." Yes they were both hits, but for heaven's sake what about the other stuff he produced?

His album "Night Owl" (forgive me if I still talk about albums) is filled with great pieces. But we'll never hear them on commercial radio.

Again, if ever you hear a Percy Sledge song on the air, chances are it just has to be "When a Man Loves a Woman." It's a great song - believe it or not I once told my kids I want it played at my funeral! - but is this all that radio can do for us, just remind us of what we already know well? Don't they trust is with the unknown?

What are they afraid of? That we'll all suddenly leap up and turn off our radios in terror if someone has the nerve to play a /different/ piece of music? You'd have to be a fool to believe that, yet against all reason that's how commercial radio functions, repeatedly broadcasting from a warmed-over puddle of standard selections about three shallow inches deep, while every day ignoring a vast ocean of music.

Charlie, like most of the radio hosts who labor in the richer and greener fields of community and nonprofit radio, admitted no such crippling restrictions in his work. There was no forgotten or ignored music on Stacks o' Tracks. Each week you heard more, and yet more, stuff Charlie had mined from the rich and varied seams of American and British rock and roll.

(Toby LeBoutilier's Friday afternoon show on Maine Public Radio, drawing brilliantly on 70 years of popular American music each week, only serves to underline how much stuff is completely ignored by the soulless drones who program commercial radio.)

Among many unforgettable moments I had while listening to Charlie is the time he played a Percy Sledge song I had never heard, "Cover Me." It changed the shape and color of that whole gray Saturday afternoon. You know, just exactly the way music is supposed to work. And this happened to me time and time again, while listening to his show.

As an intelligent and thinking man, he knew how to line tunes up in a way that both entertained us and enlarged our grasp of popular music, reminding his listeners what a treasure it is for all of us.

He was fond of playing, back-to-back, two or three or four versions of the same song by various artists, for example, so we could hear and share in the progression and the variation of musical ideas that each performer or band brought to the piece.

Some time back in February or March, Charlie hosted his last show before going down to Boston for the liver transplant. His show was kept going by a number of other WERU hosts, all of them bringing their own particular edge and flavor to the two-hour time slot.

Each Saturday as I tuned in I would ask myself if there would be news, any time soon, about Charlie coming back home. It didn't matter how long it took, just as long as he would be back on the air some day at 3 p.m. Saturdays.

The other day I listened in to one of my evening shows on WERU, and the host said Charlie is dead. I was surprised by my response, or at least by its intensity.

Well, there goes another good man down the tubes, not forgotten, and always appreciated by this listener. He is already missed.

David Grima is editor of The Camden Herald. He can be reached at dgrima@courierpub.com.