NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Growing up deep in the mountains of western North Carolina in the 1950s and 1960s, a young Charles Frazier couldn’t wait for the sun to go down. That’s when the WLAC signal would suddenly come clear out of the night sky and things would get really interesting on his radio.
“We had a little radio station that went off at dark,” Frazier recalls. “So all during the day, one radio station, country music. When school was out there was two hours of teenage music. And then the sun goes down and all the sudden there’s this station from Nashville pouring in. And I liked that really raw rockabilly stuff that’s so hard to classify. It’s definitely rawer … than even country at the time, but it was way more country sounding than most rock `n’ roll from places outside The South.”
James Brown came wailing from the speaker. That spooky voice of Howlin’ Wolf added an uneasy edge to the night. Guys like Charlie Feathers and Gene Vincent would rock his world.
Those sound memories populate the pages of the author’s new best-seller “Nightwoods,” whose quiet, reflective moments play out to a soundtrack of rhythm and blues, early rock `n’
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