Mid-Wilshire's Street Musician Extraordinaire

When we threw the Birthday Race back in 2003, we enlisted Charlie Cox -- the musician who can frequently be seen performing at the La Brea Tar Pits -- to help hand out a clue. Charlie was more than willing to play along -- especially when I told him that the competing teams would have to hand him a donation before he played his song (and handed them their clue).

I still sometimes see Charlie standing there at the Tar Pits, performing, as I make my way to Koo Koo Roo. Now, this week, blogging.la did a really superb writeup of Charlie, as part of its "L.A.'s Better Half" series.

Here are a few highlights of the piece, as written by Helen Jupiter:

Charlie has been performing in front of the Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries off and on since 1975. His specialty and favorite music to play is the old Appalachian fiddle tunes and songs. He tells me that most of this music was gathered by record companies and folk song collectors between the turn of the Twentieth century and 1930s.

"That was when folk music was still en vogue among people, and not the captive of the recording industry," Charlie explains. "Although I do some modern songs that I really enjoy playing, like "Blowing in the Wind," by Bob Dylan, and "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground," by Willie Nelson."

An avid collector, Charlie currently has about 99 instruments in his private museum. He plays a banjo, a guitar, a mandolin, a penny whistle, and bones...

These days you can find Charlie at the park pretty regularly, spontaneously teaching frenzied school groups how to square dance, and taking frequent requests for "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" and for the theme from Deliverance.

He'll play just about anything and always encourages listeners to suggest songs, but when there's no one around Charlie amuses himself by playing more obscure, traditional songs....

Charlie will be performing at the Natural History Museum on the first, third, and fourth Sundays of July and August, from 11 a.m. - 3 p.m., and you can almost always find him in Hancock Park.

(Pic of Charlie via blogging.la.)