The Late Great Mickey Fowler

Mickey Fowler was a Greenville, South Carolina based musician who passed away in December 2007. Beginning his music career back in the 1960's, Mickey personified the outlaw style of country music and blended that with the feel of true Rock and Roll. Before Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings broke away from the sterile Nashville sound in the early 1970's, Mickey was playing outlaw country in bars across the upstate of South Carolina. He was a great friend of Toy Caldwell of Marshall Tucker fame and they often played together whenever Toy would come home from the Tucker band tours of the world.  Country star, Aaron Tippin, himself a Greenville County SC native, would often cite Mickey as an inspiration.

I had the pleasure of working with Mickey on some of the songs on his self-titled CD in 2001. I was most impressed by his ability to put pure sentiment and soul into whatever song he sang. Mickey was the type of musician who could pick up a guitar and sing song after song and never forget a lyric. The man was a walking catalog of tunes. To me, that is the embodiment of what a singer should be. He was the 'real deal'. The cowboy hat fitted him perfectly. He came from the source of the music and crossed the river after living the life he conveyed in his music.

Mark McAfee, who produced Mickey's CD and is a superb musician in his own right, recently sat down with The Reedy Beat and gave an interview about the life and times of this unique individual.

Episode One of The Reedy Beat Podcast: The Late Great Mickey Fowler