Festival honoring music legend changes name


Festival honoring music legend changes name
October 23, 2009
By T.J. Aulds
The Daily News

TEXAS CITY — As people gathered Thursday to dedicate a bronze bust on the 10th anniversary of Charles Brown’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, organizers of the music festival created in his honor acknowledged grumbling about a name change.

When officials from the Hall of Fame announced that the 1999 inductees would include the blues legend, few in the music world were surprised.

The singer’s hits “Trouble Blues,” “Seven Long Days,” “Black Night” and “Please Come Home for Christmas” were tops on the charts, covered by some of the nation’s biggest musical stars. Ray Charles was said to have emulated Brown’s style.

The surprise came when his hometown was revealed to be Texas City. Few outside of Brown’s family knew that a his roots began in Galveston County.

Even with the recognition from the music industry, acknowledgment from his native home was slow in coming. Eight years after Brown’s induction, the city’s cultural arts committee created the Charles Brown Music Festival.

The third annual festival is Saturday, but in a move that surprised many music lovers — especially blues afficionados — the festival’s name was changed this year to Texas City Music Fest by the Bay: A Charles Brown Day of Remembrance.

Slight Or Not?

Was the change slight to Brown?

“Not the case at all,” the festival’s chairman, Paul Edinburgh, said. “We wanted to make the event more diverse musically and not just about the blues. But we didn’t want to forget what we started it for, either.”

The name change came earlier this year when the committee mapped the future of the festival, Edinburgh said.

“We didn’t want to be stuck with just being considered a blues festival so we could offer music for more people to enjoy,” he said.

He also acknowledged he and others on the committee have heard “plenty of grumbling” that some in the community were not comfortable with name change, especially since Brown is one of the few African-Americans who had been recognized in such a way.

Edinburgh insisted the change would not have occurred without the support of those members of Brown’s family, who still live in the area.

‘It’s Still Good’

“It’s still honoring him, so it’s still good,” Brown’s cousin Martha Darden, 70, said. Her mother and grandmother raised Brown after his mother died.

Marjorie Aldridge, another Brown cousin, said: “When I tell people to come to the festival, I still tell them it is the Charles Brown Music Festival. We are just proud they still pay tribute to him.”

Part of that tribute was unveiled Thursday when a bust of Brown was hung in the lobby of the Charles T. Doyle Convention Center. It is actually the second bust of Brown the city commissioned — the first didn’t do the musical legend justice, Mayor Matt Doyle said.

“That looks just like Charles Brown,” Darden said. “It makes us so happy, it makes you want to cry, it’s so beautiful.

“The great Charlie Brown will live on.”

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Charles Brown

Sept. 13, 1922: Born in Texas City.

1945: Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers, featuring Charles Brown on vocals, has its first hit, “Drifting Blues,” which reached No. 2 on the R&B charts.

Feb. 1, 1946: “Drifting Blues” named record of the year by Cashbox magazine.

Jan. 1, 1949: Releases first solo single, “Get Yourself Another Fool,” which reaches No. 4 on the R&B charts.

April 1, 1949: “Troubled Blues” becomes Brown’s first No. 1 as a solo artist and remains atop the R&B charts for 15 weeks.

Dec. 1, 1960: “Please Come Home for Christmas,” his last hit record, reaches No. 21 on the R&B and No. 76 on the pop charts. (In 1978 the Eagles perform a cover version of the song.)

1986: Releases a jazz album “One More for the Road.”

1990: Goes on tour with Bonnie Raitt.

May 12, 1998: Releases “So Goes Love,” his last studio album.

Jan. 21, 1999: Dies of congestive heart failure in Oakland, Calif.

March 15, 1999: Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Nov. 3, 2007: First Charles Brown Music Festival is staged at Nessler Park in Texas City.

Source: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
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