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High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project
Summary
High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project is the 20th studio album by American singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III. The album, a double-CD released on August 18, 2009, on 2nd Story Sound, pays tribute to singer and banjo picker Charlie Poole (1892–1931). It features 30 tracks, including new versions of songs made popular by Poole from 1925 through 1930, as well as original songs on Poole's turbulent life by Wainwright and producer Dick Connette.
More than 25 artists contributed to the album, including Wainwright's children, Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche, all singer-songwriters in their own right; his sister, singer-songwriter Sloan Wainwright; Maggie, Suzzy and Terre Roche of The Roches; Gabriel Kahane on piano; Chris Thile, mandolinist and vocalist; and Geoff Muldaur, a founding member of the 1960s group Jim Kweskin Jug Band.
The album won the 2010 Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album.
In the 70-page booklet that accompanies the album, Wainwright recalls having first heard of Poole in the early 1970s through folksinger Patrick Sky. He was at Sky's home in Rhode Island, and Sky played the Poole novelty song "Awful Hungry Hash House". Wainwright found it hilarious, and over the next few years learned other songs by the North Carolina picker. He also became intrigued by stories of Poole's life – his days as a mill worker, his stint as a semi-pro baseball player, his success as one of country music's first stars, and the alcoholism that led to his early death.
Wainwright admits to identifying with Poole, whom he describes as a "rambling, hard-drinking, crazy Southern showman." He initially thought of writing a biographical film on Poole's life and fantasized about playing the lead part, but it never came to anything. Instead, some three decades later, he and Connette collaborated in recording what Wainwright refers to as "a sonic bio-pic of sorts."
Connette conceived the idea for the album after giving Wainwright a copy of the three-CD collection Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music (Columbia, 2005).
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