Charley Crockett

Charley Crockett was born Matthew Charles Crockett in San Benito, Texas, in 1984, and spent much of his childhood in a trailer park in nearby Los Fresnos, raised by his mother. The family later moved to Dallas, and Crockett spent summers with an uncle in New Orleans's French Quarter.

He left school at 17 and set out with a guitar his mother had bought at a pawn shop, teaching himself to play and write songs by ear without knowing what key or chord he was using for over a decade. His early musical curiosity came through hip-hop, following samples back to artists like Curtis Mayfield and Nina Simone.

Crockett busked around New Orleans and Dallas's Deep Ellum as a teenager, then hitchhiked and rode freight trains before busking for change in New York City by 2009. He led a street band called the Trainrobbers, signed a two-year management contract with a Sony Music representative, and turned down a publishing deal. Years followed working farms and communes in Northern California, busking in Paris, and time in Spain and Morocco.

He settled back in Dallas in 2015 and self-released his debut album, A Stolen Jewel, recorded in a barn loft in Northern California; it won him the Dallas Observer's award for Best Blues Act. His music pulls together honky-tonk, western swing, soul and Gulf Coast blues, and he has kept up an unusually fast release schedule, issuing both original albums and covers collections, including a record of James Hand songs.

Since 2014 he has released 17 studio albums among 23 total projects, with The Man from Waco, $10 Cowboy, Lonesome Drifter and Dollar a Day all reaching the Billboard 200. He underwent open-heart surgery in 2019 and returned to touring afterward, his live shows built around a full band and a repertoire spanning mid-century American styles.