There is a man out there who is trying to spread the word about Charley Orr. Who is Charley Orr you might ask? Well, that’s the point.
Jeff Haas has a little obsession – the life and times of a legendary luthier: the late, great Charles Orr, a man who lived and died a relatively obscure life but whose talent and creativity changed the way guitars are made for the best and who, albeit posthumously, has the chance to finally get his story told to the public at large.
Haas has been working on a documentary about Orr which had its origin in 1985, when Haas first traveled to Minneapolis to interview him. Haas was awed by Orr’s workshop and came away with a sense of the man’s style and with the knowledge that Orr’s life was something that begs to be told, and this is shown in the film that Haas is lovingly laboring.
I asked him about Orr’s life and what made Charley, Charley. According to Haas, Charles Orr was born in Duluth MN in 1944 and had a rough childhood. Young Charley didn’t have much of a father: his dad had his own thing going on – he was a bank robber who, when he wasn’t avoiding getting caught was living high on the hog with his ill-gotten gains: driving Cadillacs around, wearing expensive, flashy clothes, and buying fancy stuff: everything except supporting his family, who were left to fend for themselves. In fact, Haas told me that Charley got so hungry at times that he ate pencils in school – not the erasers, but the graphite and the wood of them.
Orr finally escaped this poverty and got out of Duluth when he joined up with the US Army, with whom he did tours of duty in both Korea and at the beginning stages of the Vietnam War – when we just had “advisers” over there (in ‘Nam).
