Charlton Singleton
Credit: Mauricio Richardson
Grammy Winner / Trumpet
Ranky Tanky
CHANGEOVER: Talk about who you are and what it is that you do.
Charlton Singleton: I am a professional musician. I play the trumpet. People mostly see me as a trumpet player, but I also play keyboard instruments and occasionally sing. I have a number of bands that I lead, including a cover band that picks one artist or specific time period, such as music from the 80s or 90s. We've also done music from Prince, Stevie Wonder, and Whitney Houston. I also have jazz groups, such as a quintet and I have this whole big band of 18 pieces. I have a contemporary jazz band of about five or six people. I think most people, on the national side, see me as the trumpet player in a band called Ranky Tanky, which is a band from the lowcountry of South Carolina. We specialize in music from our region, which we call Gullah. We have two recordings: one from 2017 and one from 2019, which won the 2019 Grammy for Best Regional Roots Music Album.
We're going to come back to the Grammy but before we talk about that, let's talk about how you got into the music industry.
When I went off to college, I wanted to be a music teacher and, more specifically, a band director. I started off at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. About two weeks into being at Berklee, I quickly realized that maybe that wasn't the place to go to get a music education degree. At that particular time, there was a very big concentration on performance majors, music production and engineering, songwriting, film scoring, and music synthesis. I specifically remember one day in my ear training class when the teacher said, “tell us your name and your major.” Everybody going down the row said they were either performance or production and engineering. Then it was my turn and I said “I’m Charlton Singleton. I play trumpet and I am a music education major.” You could hear gasps in the room and one guy looked and me and said,”dude, you want to be a teacher?” I felt like they were looking at me like I had the plague.
Credit: Alice Keeney
One of the one of the most exciting and really good musicians at the school at the time was at the beginning stages of his career. He was a really fine jazz alto saxophonist and was going to New York on the weekends to do mini tours. The irony is that he was a music education major. If two thousand people were at that school at that particular time, I bet 100 of them were music education majors. I'm sure the teachers that were leading the music education department were very good but, after being there, that performance atmosphere was not necessarily the one that would have benefited me in terms of being a middle school band director. I decided to transfer and went to South Carolina State, which is in Orangeburg, South Carolina. I ended up staying there and, ironically, ended up with a performance degree. I did education all the way up until the very end and ended up switching at the last second.
After I graduated from South Carolina State, I came back home. I started working at a store and hooked up with a couple guys and formed a ska band. We traveled for about four years. We were up and down the East Coast and throughout the southeast part of the United States. We made a couple of recordings and tried to do the thing and become famous. At that particular point, we were getting a little bit of play because, at that time, there had been a resurgence of ska with bands like The Mighty, Mighty Bosstones. We did OK, but we didn’t really get over the hump.
I started performing and it was cool to do something different because I really didn't picture myself being a performer. After that band ended, I started teaching. I was a band director here in the low country for about seven years. Throughout that time, I was playing in local cover bands and occasionally played jazz with friends. In 2008, I stopped teaching and decided that I was going to try to do this performance thing so I started the Charlton Jazz Orchestra. I was leading that but then I started to put out a couple of jazz quintet recordings and the performance thing just started to gain a little bit of momentum. Around five years ago, some friends of mine decided that we were going to put this band back together doing jazz originals and things like that. We decided that we were going to present the music of the lowcountry, or the Gullah community, and give it a contemporary twist. It was about 2016 when we started and it just gained traction. People were interested in this style of music. We got a couple of lucky breaks, took advantage of them and made a couple of albums that vaulted to the top of the jazz charts, ironically. The second album got nominated for a Grammy and there it is.
Now that you've won a Grammy, how does it feel? How did it feel to win? Take us through that experience.
It was an emotional day. It was a very emotional day for a few reasons. Number one, if people have never been to a Grammy Awards ceremony, they tend to guess and assume a lot of things. For example, some people say, “oh, they already know that they won. That's why they already have their speech in their pocket.” No, you don’t know. You really are in the dark. I would be surprised if there were ten people that know who wins the Grammys. Those people are probably the ones that actually were the last ones to vote. It’s very, very secretive that way. So there's that aspect of being surprised.
Credit: Robby Klein
The Grammys were held in Los Angeles at the Staples Center complex. Unfortunately, that was the day that Kobe Bryant and his daughter, along with all the other occupants of that helicopter, lost their lives in that unfortunate accident. That was going on as we all woke up. When we were at the hotel, it was probably about 9:30 in the morning, West Coast time. People were getting notifications on their phones and reports started coming in. Our hotel was about four blocks away from the complex so by the time we got there, and walked the red carpet, people were there in their Kobe jerseys and doing all these cheers for him. Then thousands of people would go eerily silent. During the silence, you could hear one person praying and then it would go back to cheers and people crying. So there was the emotion of all of that.
Credit: Charlton Singleton
When we were in the auditorium, we were on pins and needles because it was a big moment. Literally, right before they said “and the nominations are…,” I looked down the row to my band mates and said, “no matter what happens, I love you all. For the rest of our lives, we will have Grammy-nominated in front of our names.” I kind of set myself up because it was a tense moment. Esperanza Spalding was the presenter. She watched the whole thing about all of the nominations then turned around and said, “and the Grammy goes to Good Time, Ranky Tanky.” Going from not knowing, to thinking this isn't our time to oh my God, we just won a Grammy! That's a big emotional shift. It was definitely the biggest moment in my music career. I couldn't believe it.
At the end, after we went through all of the press, we went to lunch and came back. The Grammy Awards didn’t go on until 8 or 9 PM on the East Coast, but it was still around five o'clock in the afternoon. The whole program shifted because of Kobe. There were very solemn moments. We were in the Staples Center and none of the banners were lit except for Kobe’s banner. It was an emotional night. They would go from speaking about him and his presence in the city, and in music and entertainment, to Lizzo kicking off the Grammys and everybody rocking out like crazy. At the end, as an artist and as a performer, one of the things that you strive for is a Grammy. Who wouldn't want to win a Grammy Award? Who wouldn't want to be recognized for their work? It was a very happy day careerwise, and it was an emotional day just as a human being because of that incident. We were still very blessed and we're still incredibly happy and thankful for the academy to recognize Gullah music for the very first time. We are also thankful for all of the people that supported us, and were with us through the whole process from day one, when we started in 2016.
Where were you when COVID-19 hit and how has that affected your career?
We were planning on this massive tour. We probably had about a hundred gigs planned. On average, we were going to have somewhere between 15 and 20 shows a month between April and August. We had a European tour scheduled. When everything shut down, that was it. Everything got either totally canceled or rescheduled. In some instances, it was rescheduled because a lot of people thought that it was going to blow over. For example, we were supposed to play Jazz Fest in New Orleans on the last day in April and that got postponed. Then it was pushed to the fall of 2020. Then that date got postponed. Then they said they would have Jazz Fest at its normal time in 2021 at the end of April and May. When we got to January, they said it didn’t look like it was going to happen. Jazz Fest is now going to be in October and we are on that. We are now getting solid gigs off of the rescheduled reschedules.
Some places have come up with clever ways to do shows. We've done some shows where we have added some money to the budget in order for us to have the show professionally shot. The show is then broadcast to patrons with a private livestream. We've done a lot of Zoom talks about the music, about where we're from and the Gullah community. We've done a lot of outreach programs, via Zoom, for a lot of cultural centers that have educational arms. There have been a few places that we've gone and played to a reduced crowd. In January, we played in Omaha, Nebraska. We played in this state of the art facility that probably held about 2000 people but I think they only sold 250 tickets as their cap. Everybody was spread out all over, which was quite the show in social distancing. Everybody was so excited to be out of the house and in front of live music. It was a rabid applause before we played one note.
Smaller places have done things like have us do two shows where they had really large social distancing, seating wise. As soon as the show was over, they got everybody out and then cleaned the place. After an hour, they let in another small group of people. There's no meet and greet. You basically just go out on the stage and play. It feels really good to be out in front of people and play again.
When everything was shut down, was there anything that you did in the meantime while you were waiting for music to come back?
Credit: Ben Egelson
Actually, yes. I released a contemporary jazz album. It came out on July 3rd of 2020. In 2019 I had this really crazy idea, even though Ranky Tanky was this well oiled machine. We were doing all of these gigs, playing festivals and traveling. We played some iconic festivals. We played in some iconic spots, such as the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands. We flew from the North Sea Jazz Festival straight to New York City and drove straight to our gig, which was in Central Park. I couldn’t believe I was doing that.
In the middle of all of the Ranky Tanky stuff, I made a goal of releasing five solo recordings in 2020. I started working on them periodically. The contemporary jazz one was the most finished so we just worked harder on it because we had this down time now due to COVID. We were able to get it out there. One thing that happened in my favor was that one of the songs ended up being on SiriusXM Satellite Radio on their contemporary jazz station, Watercolors. We weren't on the road so being played on Sirius was probably my biggest source of income while everything was on hold.
There are other organizations that helped out as well, like South Arts, which is a really fine organization that helps with artists in the southeastern region. However, that one project was the main thing that I was able to focus on and and get out there. It's eight songs. The irony of it is that the first four songs are instrumental and all of those were written in 2019. The last four songs are all vocal tunes, and I wrote those songs back in the 90’s when I was with the ska bands but they don't sound like ska music at all. I'm very proud of that album. It's called Date Night and it's something that you can listen to if you’re having a glass of wine or on a date. It's got a couple of love songs on there that I wrote at the time for my girlfriend, who's now my wife of 20 plus years. I really enjoyed working on that project. Another album - traditional jazz - is now in the phase of getting all the artwork done. It's already been mixed and mastered so it’s about to come out.
What is it that you miss the most about touring?
Just being in front of the audience. It's such a rush and a good feeling to perform and share this music. It's really timeless music. The songs that we've chosen from the Gullah community, and the songs that we've written together as a band with the Gullah community spirit in mind, are songs that everybody can connect with in some way, shape or form. We have a song called Freedom that I think everyone, honestly, on Earth could probably connect with in some way. Everybody, I think, in good humanitarianism, wants freedom. That song talks about some of the freedoms that we might not have, but it does make you think. You can want freedom from being sucked in by fast food all the time. You can want freedom from something with your government. You can want freedom from being in a toxic relationship. You can walk freedom from being addicted to watching The Big Bang Theory every time it comes on. It’s the universal thought of freedom of something that everybody would like to have. We're very proud of the album. We wrote and recorded it here in Charleston, South Carolina, and it has the lowcountry fingerprints all over it. To be recognized by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences is just an amazing thing for us that we thought we would never see. It's just amazing.
What is it that you're looking forward to the most when you get back on the road?
Interacting with our concertgoers. We have a good time on the road. Our shows are what I call the three E’s. They are entertaining, educational, and enlightening. When we go out on stage, you can definitely feel the technical prowess and the technical command of the instruments with the five of us. The farther we go away from the lowcountry, the more we usually have to explain to folks what Gullah is. Once we explain it to them, then they start to realize that they probably have come in contact with something that is Gullah in their lifetime. They probably just didn't know that Gullah was the root of it. For example, when we’re on stage and I say that the most recognizable song of Gullah on the face of the earth is definitely Kumbaya, it then makes sense to fans. If you think about it, Gullah is rooted in the West Africans that came over as slaves. That's the educational part and the enlightening part of our concerts. When I'm out there on the stage and talking about it, I literally hear the gasps and see the light bulbs going off with our crowd when I tell them about these things. I enjoy talking with people like that. That's the teacher in me. It's all encompassing when you get on stage.
For more information and tour dates, please visit the Charlton Singleton and Ranky Tanky websites.