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In 2003 Charley made Grandpa Flatpicked, an album with a acoustic country orientation. The first three samples below are from that album.
MY ROUGH AND ROWDY WAYS. The real father of country music was Jimmie Rodgers, whose music blended old-time American folk sounds with blues and early jazz elements. Charley really enjoys that characteristic of Jimmie Rodgers' work. Here is a great old Jimmie Rodgers song not often enough heard. It is on Charley's Grandpa Flatpicked CD. All lead instrumentals and vocals are by Charley.
AIN'T MISBEHAVIN'. Charley loves to play Fats Waller's ragtime tunes on piano. Here's a Fats tune, without the piano this time, from the Grandpa Flatpicked album. This is an all-acoustic, string-based version. Charley plays the guitar and mandolin leads, keeping that ragtime flavor with string band instrumentation. His Easy Street band accompanies.
BLACK NIGHT. The blues are very much a part of Charley's music. Here is Jessie Mae Robinson's great Black Night, with Charley on vocals, piano, and organ, with Tom Stephens on slide guitar and harmonica.
The next three samples are from Charley's 2004 Remember Me album.
DEEP WATER. Famed western swing pioneer Bob Wills, with his Texas Playboys, recorded this classic Fred Rose tune, a fabulous synthesis of jazz and western/country elements, in 1947. Here is Charley's version of it, a little uptempo from the original, featuring Charley's vocal, piano and lead guitar work.
GEORGIA ON MY MIND. Charley plays the Hoagy Carmichael classic on his Gibson Herb Ellis archtop guitar, with second guitar and bass fiddle, in a recording originally made live in a club. This version uses the correct original chords for the piece. Charley sings.
SUGAR MOON. This classic Cindy Walker tune was made famous by Bob Wills. Charley recorded it in Prague, Czech Republic, with fiddle phenomenon Jiri (Fiddle George) Kralik and a Czech supporting band. European western swing???
This one has been very popular in Charley's central European shows.
SPANISH FANDANGO. Charley likes to play guitar in alternate tunings, but has not recorded much music in non-standard tunings. Here is Charley's verison of the great Spanish Fandango in an open G tuning, from the Remember Me CD.
PALLET ON YOUR FLOOR. One of Charley's best-liked fingerstyle pieces is his version of the traditional Pallet On Your Floor . He added this one to the Remember Me album. It was recorded in Prague, Czech Republic, with backup by fine Czech musicians.
In his home state of Florida, there is no doubt Charley's best known song is his Florida Moon, which is sung and played all around the state and often recorded by other artists. Here is a sample from Charley's recording of the song on his Grandpa Flatpicked album, followed by St. James Infirmary Blues, also from Grandpa Flatpicked.
FLORIDA MOON. Although Florida Moon had been recorded by others, Charley never recorded his own version of it until he included it on Grandpa Flatpicked in 2003. For a time Florida considered adopting a new state song, and Florida Moon was nominated to replace Way Down Upon the Swannee River. A 1990 version of Florida Moon recorded by Jan Milner has been used as theme music for television broadcasts of sessions of the Florida legislature. In this version Charley sings and plays guitar and mandolin leads.
ST. JAMES INFIRMARY BLUES. Charley has played Autoharp since he was ten years old. He plays this version of the old St. James Infirmary Blues with an unusual Autoharp lead, creating a synthesis of old-time and blues sounds. Charley sings and is accompanied by his band, Charley Groth & Group, featuring Tom Stephens' great slide guitar and Jim Davis on bass fiddle.
Here, Charley (center) is seen with Charley Groth & Group, performing his version of St. James Infirmary Blues in the Sarasota Sailing Squadron acoustic concert series, Sarasota, Florida, 2002. Jim Davis (left) plays bass fiddle, and Tom Stephens (right) plays guitar.
THE TICKLER. Charley Groth loves ragtime, and he plays many rags both on piano and guitar. He wrote The Tickler as a tribute to the fabulous ivory ticklers (like Fats Waller and James P. Johnson), who have long inspired him. In this recording Charley plays piano and Jim Davis plays bass.
Charley is pictured here playing The Tickler in California recently, with the great Devil Mountain Jazz Band based in the San Jose area and touring nationally. Band leader Ken Keeler is shown playing banjo. For those in the eastern part of the country who like his ragtime work, Charley does a special ragtime piano set annually at the famed Florida Folk Festival at White Springs, Florida.
ALL AMERICAN RIDE. Charley loves to flatpick guitar. A few weeks before the 9/11 tragedy he wrote a flatpicking tune with a little swing tinge in it (mostly from the chord changes). He called it All American Ride, since it
was the theme for a show he was in called The All-American Music Revue. (Many musicians call an extended instrumental solo a "ride".) The same week this show was to be performed, the World Trade Center was destroyed. Charley didn't write All American Ride as a reaction to the terrorist attack, but he did dedicate this piece, at the first public performance of it, to all those who suffered as a result of what happened. And that, of course, includes all of us. Jim Davis and Tom Stephens join Charley here. All American Ride is on Charley's Grandpa Flatpicked album.
GRANDPA FLATPICKED. This is the title song of the Grandpa Flatpicked album. In addition to making music himself, Charley has been a music teacher all of his life, as time and his touring schedule permit. Listening to one of his many students performing, Charley thought about how teachers live on in those they teach. As those students in turn pass on what they have learned to others, there is a sort of immortality in it all. Here Charley sings and plays flatpicked lead guitar with his Florida band, Charley Groth & Group, featuring at the time of this recording Tom Stephens on guitar and Jim Davis on bass fiddle.
COUNTRY PICKIN'. While making Grandpa Flatpicked, Charley realized it had been many years since he had recorded any of his old-timey banjo playing. Thinking of some great folks who gather every Friday night at the southern home of Jim and Peggy Kaufman for an old-time traditional country jam session, and of his own childhood experiences growing up in the country, Charley promptly wrote this song so he'd have a new one on which to play banjo. Lead parts, lead and harmony vocals, by Charley.
