Charlie Brown, one of Atlanta’s best known and most notable drag performers, has died at 74.
His death on March 21 followed heart valve replacement surgery in February, which was complicated by post-procedure infection, said Richard Eldredge, former Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter and co-writer of Brown’s upcoming memoir.
“Charlie Brown led a remarkable life,” Eldredge said. “His impact on drag in Atlanta was massive. He was a trailblazer.”
His Charlie Brown’s Cabaret at the once renowned Midtown 24-hour gay club Backstreet became a raucous late night must-see show from 1990 to 2004 and he kept on performing in Atlanta until he couldn’t do it anymore.
Born Charles Dillard in 1949, Brown grew up in Westmoreland, Tennessee, on a country farm in a missionary Baptist family. After a brief stint in the Air Force, and residing in various places in both North Carolina and Tennessee, he made his way to Atlanta in 1978 with longtime partner and husband Fred Wise. The two met in a bar in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1976, and remained together until Brown’s death.
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
“He saw stuff in me that I didn’t,” Brown told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Nedra Rhone in 2019. “That is the secret of my career. I always had him there working to support me. We have always been a tag team and the absolute best of friends.”
His drag persona evolved from Las Vegas showgirl to a sassy Southern woman with a bawdy sense of humor.
By 1979, Brown was the host at the Sweet Gum Head, known as the birthplace of Atlanta drag. In his narrative history of drag in Atlanta called “A Night at Sweet Gum Head,” Martin Padgett writes, “Charlie was a talented emcee, a versatile moneymaker and the club’s most politically active host yet. The fundraisers for causes and benefits became a regular part of the Gum Head’s weekly schedule, and Charlie worked many, if not most of them.”
That fundraising and community activism was a hallmark of Brown’s work for the rest of his life.
In the early 1980s, the Atlanta Gay Pride parade organizers discouraged drag queens and men in leather. Their presence was thought to diminish the importance of the event, Brown said in 2019. But he didn’t care, becoming the first drag queen to participate, riding down the street with the Texas Drilling Company (a former Atlanta bar) and leathermen wearing chaps.
By 1990, Mr. Charlie Brown, as he was often billed, had become an Atlanta icon. That year, Vicki Vara, whose family owned the popular Backstreet club, was looking for fresh entertainment. “When people came in, it was a big empty room and people left,” she said, referring to the top floor of the club. “I remember thinking we needed a crowd starter.”
Credit: Neil McGahee
Credit: Neil McGahee
By hiring Brown, Backstreet got that and more. His late-night show, which began at 11 p.m. and would sometimes go all night long, drew people from all walks of life and even the occasional celebrity like Elton John, Jermaine Dupri and Janet Jackson.
“He was doing crowd work long before TikTok came along,” Eldredge said. “He was off the cuff. He was lacerating. He was hilariously funny. But he was able to make fun of people in the crowd while also welcoming you in his space. You could be gay, straight, bi. It didn’t matter.”
Topher Payne, an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, used to work at Midtown’s Outwrite Books and recalled going to Brown’s cabaret at Backstreet after the store closed. He was never targeted by Brown. “I was a baby hiding in the corner praying not to be noticed,” he said.
In a Facebook celebration of Brown, he said “if we were to define our queer lives in Atlanta by the reign of a monarch, then I came of age during the era of Her Majesty Mr. Charlie Brown.”
Payne said there was “an old-school showbiz pizzazz to Mr. Charlie Brown that we don’t quite know how to bottle and sell anymore. With time, his gift for gab evolved into being a village elder raconteur, carrying the weight of our collective queer Atlanta history on his back, in heels, as only he could.”
Following the closing of Backstreet in 2004, Brown toured, playing shows nationally and even internationally. Back home in Atlanta, he’d do residencies at Blake’s on the Park, Lips, and, most recently, the Atlanta Eagle, where he was still performing earlier this year.
In 2019, he told the AJC at Lips Atlanta that “the best thing about my career is I am entertaining. I am making people laugh. If you can’t laugh at a 69-year-old fat, baldheaded man in a dress, you don’t have any business here after dark.”
He also remained active in LGBTQ issues. Last year, after a drag ban in his home state of Tennessee that was later halted by a federal judge, Brown wrote an op-ed in the Nashville Tennessean. “As someone who has performed in drag all over the world, it tears me up to see things slide backwards,” he wrote.
The City of Atlanta Division of LGBTQ Affairs joined the flood of remembrances on Facebook: “Charlie has been an integral part of Atlanta’s vibrant cultural landscape for decades, and his contributions to our city will be forever cherished. From his early days at the Sweet Gum Head Club to receiving the Phoenix Award in 2022, Charlie’s legacy as a drag icon, entertainer and advocate has left his mark on Atlanta and beyond.”
Social media tributes were numerous, with the word “legend” making frequent appearances. For once, that’s not an overstatement.
Brown’s self-published memoir is planned for release later this year for what would have been his 75th birthday. That was some comfort to Brown while he was facing mortality, Eldredge said.
“He was nervous the night before the surgery [in February], so during a phone call I reminded him: ‘You finished the book. You got to the finish line. Your story is safe, it’s down on paper now and will be told’,” Eldredge said.
