Charlie’s performance matches the quality of the song and he certainly doesn’t get bettered by any of the covers”. The quality of the song may only have become apparent to some people after cover versions from Bobby Bland and Jerry Lee Lewis (in a later incarnation well past his Sun days) amongst others. In my Amazon review of the Charly label collection, That’s Rich, I described this song as “a brooding study of melancholia which is now rightly regarded as a pioneering release in the overlapping genres of country soul and white soul. Let’s cut to the chase, Phillips International 3566, Who Will The Next Fool Be, written and performed by Charlie Rich in 1961 delivered white country soul before anyone had even dreamed up the term ‘soul music’. ![]() ![]() And in the end I’d go for Charlie, mainly, but not only, because he wrote some of those great, great songs as well as performing them. For reasons I won’t bore you with I’d lop off the last pair leaving Charlie and El slugging it out in those great Sun Studios in the sky. If I was asked to nominate the best performer of country soul with a white skin I’d probably come up with a short list of four candidates: Elvis, Charlie Rich, Gram Parsons and Lonnie Mack.
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