Mick Hartley

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RIP Charlie Gillett

It was something of a shock this morning to read of the death of Charlie Gillett. Through the late Seventies, right up to his forced retirement due to ill health a couple of years ago, he was the one radio DJ I used to make an effort to listen to. Even now I occasionally check out his website for playlists and recommendations. Somehow through his various stints at Capital Radio, GLR or Radio 3, he kept his integrity and his unfailing good taste.

Although he wrote one of the first definitive guides to the birth of rock'n'roll with "The Sound of the City", he was probably best known for his championing of what became known as World Music. Without Charlie I doubt that I, and thousands of others, would have heard of Franco, Salif Keita, Cesaria Evora, Portuguese fado star Mariza, and a host of others. I corresponded with him a few times, and met him once, and he was always friendly and ready to talk: a delightful man.

Richard Williams has a fine obituary here.

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4 responses to “RIP Charlie Gillett”

  1. Sheddie Avatar
    Sheddie

    I used to love his ping pong games on his GLR show with its tennis metaphores. He once played it with Richard Williams on train songs. Richard played a devilish tophand spin lob with an obscure train blues where the singer mentioned McComb Mississippi. But Charlie missed the killer smash response when he failed to play ‘Down Home Special’

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  2. Mick H Avatar
    Mick H

    Those radio ping-pong games were great, even when the guests (unlike, say, Richard Williams) didn’t really understand the point of it and just played what they wanted to play. Raul Malo I remember, from the Mavericks, kept playing these tracks of old British crooners that he rated, like Matt Munro – stuff that Charlie would never normally have played in a million years – but it didn’t throw him at all. Almost a precursor of Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour in that respect: opening your ears to music you didn’t expect.

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  3. Bob Avatar
    Bob

    Thanks for this Mick. I am really sad to hear this. I used to listen to his GLR show religiously, and frequently taped (actually MDed, as I seem to tend towards evolutionary dead end technologies) and still listen to them often. Like Sheddie, I especially loved his radio ping pong. I don’t recall the train one though!
    I also combed through his The Sound of the City in my local public library as a teenager, borrowing the LPs of the artists mentioned from the library too whenever I could find them – Bobby Blue Bland was one example I think.
    I enjoyed the Richard Williams obituary, where I learned lots of things I did’t know, such as that he once wrote for Anarchy. It is also sweet and unsurprising that he seems to have been life-long monogamous, sticking with his teenage sweetheart.

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  4. Bob Avatar
    Bob

    Another way that Charlie Gillett profoundly affected my life (along with that of most British people of my generation): he persuaded, I am told, Ian Dury to sing in his own accent and not in a false American accent. Hard to imagine the parallel world where that piece of advice was unheeded.

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