Charlie Rich Midnite Blues/Whirlwind vinyl documents the moment when Rich recorded his first solo session for Phillips International in August 1958, delivering two tracks that showed exactly why Sun Records and its subsidiaries produced some of the most tightly wound American recordings of that era.
Who Charlie Rich Was
Charlie Rich started as a jazz pianist before Sam Phillips signed him. That background in jazz harmony gave him a more sophisticated approach to chord voicings than most of the rockabilly artists Sun was recording at the same moment. He could play in multiple registers: straight rockabilly, blues, and the kind of sophisticated country ballad that would eventually make him a major mainstream success in the 1970s. In 1958 he was still working out which direction to go, and that uncertainty produces a specific creative energy that the early Phillips International sessions captured particularly well. Rich was an artist trying to fit his jazz-trained instincts into a form that the label and audience understood.
Charlie Rich Midnite Blues/Whirlwind vinyl: The Recording
Whirlwind was the A-side of Rich’s first solo single, released November 1958 on Phillips International, the subsidiary Sam Phillips launched to handle non-country material. Midnite Blues is the flip side. Both tracks demonstrate Rich’s ability to move between the loose, rhythmic energy of the Sun session approach and something more harmonically considered. The Sun production style, regardless of subsidiary, had a specific analog warmth that came from the way the studio was run, the room acoustics, and the musicians who passed through it. These 1958 recordings carry that warmth as a primary characteristic.
The Pressing
SLEAZY RECORDS releasing this on 7-inch vinyl puts the original format back in play. A 1958 recording of this quality and historical weight belongs on a 45, which is the format it was designed for and the format that best replicates the original listening context. The 7-inch also functions as a physical document of a specific moment in American recording history: a jazz-trained pianist making his first solo record at a studio that would define a decade of popular music. The Phillips International subsidiary catalog is one of the more specific areas of Sun Records history, and this 7-inch sits at the beginning of that story. Rich’s career trajectory makes it more significant in retrospect than it appeared at the time.
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