Big man. Big voice. Big smile. Big personality. There seemed to be nothing small about Charlie Burgin.
Burgin, whose gritty blues voice made him a local legend during a singing career that spanned five decades, died Tuesday at age 69 after several years of failing health.
Visitation will be held from noon-6 p.m. today at Lee-Sykes Funeral Home. Funeral services are set for 11 a.m. Friday at the funeral home, followed by interment at Union Cemetery.
Naturally, the word “big” comes into play with that, too.
“I’m not sure the place will be big enough for all the people who will probably want to pay their respects,” said Ron Williams, another Columbus singer whose association with Burgin goes back to the mid-70s. “He was a local legend, not only in Columbus but in Tuscaloosa, too. He started singing when live music was playing in dozens of clubs every night of the week. Charlie was always in great demand.”
Thomas Lee, owner of Lee-Sykes Funeral Home, said Burgin was an original.
“I kind of think of him as a cross between Charley Pride and B.B. King,” Lee said. “I’ve known him all his life. He grew up here in Columbus, went to Hunt High School and lived his whole life here. Charlie was always singing, right up until the end.”
Burgin began singing with bands in nightclubs in the mid-1960s, said Williams, who in Burgin’s later years helped him stay engaged in the music business, arranging appearances and driving him to and from singing engagements.
“I’d say he started in the business around 1965,” Williams said. “I started in 1973, and by then, Charlie was already pretty well established.”
In the early days, Burgin was generally the only black member of the bands in which he played, performing before almost all-white audiences at long-since shuttered nightclubs west of the Tombigbee River.
The popularity of “black music” among white audiences at the time was reaching its peak, and Burgin provided an authentic blues voice that was much in demand, Williams said.
“He sang everywhere in Columbus — the Go-Go Beach Club, Straight Eight Junior, the Southernaire Club, Del Camino, all of those old nightclubs where you had live music every night,” Williams said.
Husband and father
For most people, Burgin was known as a singer. Cassaundra Burgin knew him as something more important — dad.
“Oh, he was the best,” said Cassaundra, one of Charlie’s three children. “He took great care of us. He was a great provider. (He) made sure we all got our education, made sure we went to church — all those important things. Even though he was playing music a lot of nights, he always made time for us and for mom. My mom and dad would have been married 48 years on Dec. 22.
“What I remember most about dad is how happy and generous he was. If he had a million dollars and you asked for $999,999, he’d give it to you. He was like that.”
A big comeback
For a big man — Williams said Burgin weighed more than 400 pounds — Burgin was a surprisingly energetic performer.
“Like any frontman, it goes with the territory,” Williams said. “And Charlie had the personality to go with the voice.”
Eventually, Burgin’s weight issues began to take a toll, Williams said.
“Most of his health issues were health related — diabetes, COPD, heart disease,” Williams said.
For a few years, in fact, Burgin disappeared from the music scene.
“People would ask me, ‘Where’s Charlie?’ until finally he got in touch with one of the guys I was in the band with,” Williams said. “He was living in a nursing home in Starkville and in bad shape. This was in about 2010. Not long after that, he went to some rehab place and lost a lot of weight — more than 100 pounds — and that made a really big difference.”
In 2013, Williams arranged for Burgin to sing with his band, Southbound Train, and headed to Clarksdale, where Burgin and the band performed at the legendary Ground Zero Blues Club.
“Nobody knew who Charlie was,” Williams said. “But he had that charm, and he was an instant hit with the crowd. We would end up playing there two to three times a year.”
The trips to Clarksdale also led to a meeting with actor Morgan Freeman, a co-owner of Ground Zero.
“He was thrilled with that,” Williams said.
In the last few years, as Burgin slowly began to gain weight again, his health declined.
“He was on oxygen and in a wheelchair,” Williams said. “But that didn’t stop him. We’d help him up on the stage and onto a chair, put his oxygen tank next to him, and he would start singing.”
Happy until the end
Near the end, Burgin was often admitted to the hospital as his health condition reached a critical stage.
Last weekend, however, things were different.
“We were shocked,” Cassaundra Burgin said. “Dad would always go into the hospital, and in a few days he’d be better and come home. This last time was like that, we thought. My sister is a nurse, and she knew his health was really deteriorating. But he seemed like his old self. He wasn’t lying in bed wasting away. He was happy and talking and seemed to be doing better.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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