***This Week in Texas Music History is brought to you by Brane Audio***
By Jason Mellard from the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University.
On September 2, 1929, Charline Arthur was born in a railroad boxcar in Henrietta, Texas. She was raised in a musical family. Her father was a harmonica-player and Pentecostal preacher, and her mother played piano and guitar. Charline made her first guitar out of a cigar box when she was five. She became a skilled vocalist and played multiple instruments, performing with her sister at rodeos, churches, and barn dances. By fifteen, she performed regularly on KPLT in Paris, Texas.
In the early 1950s, Arthur moved to the small West Texas town of Kermit to work on station KERB. While there, she met the infamous Colonel Tom Parker, who signed her to RCA Victor in 1952. She moved to Dallas to headline the Big D Jamboree barn dance, where she often shared the stage with Parker’s other charge, Elvis Preseley. Arthur became known for her dynamic stage performances, touring with Elvis but also with Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Marty Robbins.
However, her records were only moderately successful, and her relationship with RCA grew turbulent. In addition to her reputation as a strong-willed, assertive woman in an industry that checked the ambitions of such artists, Arthur was known for her racy lyrical innuendos, which didn’t go over well in the 1950s. When her RCA contract expired in 1956, it was not renewed. While she continued to perform and record for small labels, her career never fully recovered. Arthur died in 1987 living in a trailer park in Idaho, but her star lived on in the way that her performances influenced icons like Patsy Cline and Elvis Presley. Her story, too, is a valuable lesson on the challenges faced by women in country music in midcentury Texas.
Sources:
Emily Neely, “Charline Arthur: The Unmaking of a Honky-Tonk Star,” Southern Cultures 8, no. 3. 2002.
Tresi Weeks in Laurie E. Jasinski, Gary Hartman, Casey Monahan, and Ann T. Smith, eds. The Handbook of Texas Music. Second Edition. Denton, TX: Texas State Historical Association, 2012.
