Thinking about a Bobby Charles album the way we normally think of albums probably isn’t fair. It’s hard to believe he took much care with programming Timeless, and the album features six (that I’m aware of) songs that he has already recorded or that have been kicking around for years. “Before I Grow Too Old” is a song he co-wrote with Fats Domino and Dave Bartholomew that frst appeared on 1972’s Bobby Charles album, and “You’ll Always Live Inside of Me” is a co-write from 1977 with David Allan Coe.
More likely, music was something Charles did when inspiration hit, whether inspiration came in the form of new songs, new ideas or just a desire to sing old songs again. It’s not clear that he cared about albums as units that documented anything more than what was on his mind and perhaps what was leftover in his musical pantry. Since he was a reluctant performer under the best of times, going in the studio with Sonny Landreth, Dr. John, Mickey Raphael and others was his occasion to scratch his musical itch and spend time with friends. Really, his albums document his social time.
Fortunately, Charles had good friends, so even skeletal ideas produce reliably entertaining blues rock circa the late 1960s/early 1970s, and the presence of his friend Dr. John in the production chair seemed to bring out the best in Charles the vocalist. His voice was an eccentric instrument that often sounded as offhanded as his lyrics, but he never seems inattentive or too casual. Like his best songs, he sounds just casual enough.
Charles includes three occasional songs—“Happy Birthday Fats Domino,” “Happy Halloween” and “Take Back My Country”—songs that are meant to be revived once a year, but it’s hard to imagine many who’ll return to them more often than that. Far stronger are the songs that suggest a modicum of attention—not so much that the songs seem worked, but enough to suggest he took them seriously “Nickels, Dimes and Dollars” is the closest he came here to crafting a tune, playing with monetary references to count the ways he’s brokenhearted. It, like many of the songs here, seems truly timeless with language so commonplace and artless that it could come from any moment.
Better, though, is “Rollin’ Round Heaven.” Charles’ passing gives the song poignancy, but it’s a notion of gospel that couldonly come from him. The title gives it an informal air, and it’s easy to imagine someone who’d had a pot bust getting a sly laugh at working “rolling” into a description of the afterlife.
I’ve been told that Bobby Charles knew his days were numbered when he was recording Timeless, and it’s tempting to think of that while listening to “Rollin’ Round Heaven” and “Before I Grow Too Old”—something he sometimes felt he’d done—but more likely, the album refects nothing more or less than what he’d been doing and who he’d been doing it with for the last year. Coherence isn’t its long suit, but it suggests he spent the last year well.
