Never Too Old to Be a New Sensation

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Youth is not essential to break into the music business — here are seven performers who found success later in life

In 2011, at age 62, Charles Bradley released his debut album 'No Time for Dreaming'

On December 6, 2019, Decca Records, the celebrated English label that introduced The Rolling Stones and The Moody Blues to the world, released "Love Changes Everything," an album of popular tunes sung by a musician named Colin Thackery.

The record sold well, reaching number 13 in the album charts. This would be an otherwise unremarkable story were it not for the fact that it made Thackery the oldest artist ever to have recorded a debut album. He was 89 years and 272 days of age at the time of its release.

A Korean War veteran, Thackery had never sung professionally. Earlier in 2019, he'd entered "Britain's Got Talent," a popular variety competition show on television, and walked away with the top prize of £250,000. Thackery subsequently sang live for Prince William and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, at the Royal Variety Performance.

Thackery's story is, of course, unusual. Youth dominates popular music, with instances of successful debuts by older adults being notably rare. A 2019 survey by Billboard magazine showed that the average age of a charting solo act was 29 years and 3 months, while other research found that music artists reach their commercial peak between the ages of 20 and 30. There are successful musicians who keep going well into their seventies and beyond, notably the Rolling Stones, but they started when they were young. Is there really any room for late starters?

Happily, there is. Unquestionably, record companies are heavily biased toward the up-and-coming generation, but there are shining examples of recognition achieved later in life.

Elizabeth Cotten, Housekeeper Turned Folk Legend

Take the story of Elizabeth Cotten. Born into a poor family in North Carolina in 1893, she had to quit school when she was 9 years old to earn money and put food on the table. By 12 she had managed to save up enough to buy a $3 guitar. She taught herself to play, even though, as a left-hander, she had to turn the instrument upside down.

She married when she was 17 and later divorced, eventually moving in with her daughter and her daughter's family. Many years passed. Then came an extraordinary twist of fate. When she was in her 60s and working in a department store, Cotten helped a lost girl find her family. The grateful parents offered her a job as a housekeeper, which she accepted.

One day she took down a guitar that was hanging on a wall in the family's house and began to play. She chose a song of her own, one she had written more than 40 years earlier, "Freight Train."

As it turns out, the girl she had helped in the department store was the future folk music great Peggy Seeger, daughter of an academic musicologist, Charles Seeger, and a sister of fellow folk luminaries Mike and Pete. When the Seegers heard Cotten play, they were astonished by her talent and determined to bring her before a wider audience.

Mike Seeger himself recorded the tracks that comprised Cotten's debut album, "Folksongs and Instrumentals with Guitar," which was released in 1958, when Cotten would have been 65. After that, she shared stages with blues legends Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and Mississippi John Hurt. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and many other folk musicians have covered "Freight Train."

John Paul Larkin, Itinerant Piano Player to "Scatman" Sensation

Swapping genres completely, some of you may remember two worldwide hits from 1995, "Scatman" and "Scatman's World," likable pop records with infectious melodies and distinctive 'scat' singing. The musician behind these was John Paul Larkin aka Scatman John, a 53-year-old native Californian then a resident in Germany.

Larkin had developed a severe stutter at an early age and sought solace in playing piano, which gave him a welcome means of eloquent self-expression. Larkin worked as a jobbing jazz pianist, playing in clubs around California and then Berlin, but it was not until 1995 that he became a global star. His agent, Manfred Zähringer, suggested Larkin combine his scat singing with modern dance music.

Although he died in 1999, Larkin lived to see his inspirational debut album sell more than one million copies worldwide.

Angenor de Oliveira, Car Washer Becomes a Samba Superstar

Half a world away and several decades earlier, Angenor de Oliveira had been the first of eight children born to a family in Catete, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Born in 1908, he worked from the age of 15, first as a printer's apprentice, then a bricklayer, although he never lost his love of playing the cavaquinho, or Portuguese guitar.

As a bricklayer, he took to sporting an old bowler hat to keep cement dust from his hair, earning himself the nickname "Cartola," Portuguese for "top hat." Cartola was 17 when his mother died, and there followed a year of homelessness and drifting. At 18, he married, and supported his family with a variety of menial jobs. At the same time, he recorded several samba tunes but made little money. Illness followed, and by the late 1940s the musician was scraping out a living as a handyman in the slums of Nilópolis, a city near Rio de Janeiro.

In 1956, while working as a car washer, a chance meeting with a music journalist named Sérgio Porto turned Cartola's fortunes around. He began playing for radio, and in 1963 opened the now-famous Zicartola bar in Rio, which became the most important samba establishment of its era.

He released his first album in 1974, and today he is considered a legendary figure in Brazilian music, having composed over 500 pieces. In 2007, a documentary titled simply "Cartola, the Samba Legend," paid tribute to his work.

Steven Gene Wold, a Farm Hand Finally Feted for Playing the Blues

Also in 2007, the country-blues guitarist Steven Gene Wold, known as Seasick Steve, won MOJO magazine's Breakthrough Award for best new artist — at age 65. Born in Oakland, California, Wold says he spent 14 years hopping freight trains, taking odd jobs with carnivals and working as a farm laborer. He has released more than a dozen well-received albums since 2004.

Charles Bradley, Club Habitué Turns Soul Music Recording Artist

Gainesville, Florida native Charles Bradley was born into poverty in 1948 and by his mid-teens was living on the streets of Brooklyn and sleeping in subway cars. In the 1990s, he was earning money as a James Brown impersonator in local clubs when he came to the attention of Gabriel Roth, co-founder of Daptone Records. Daptone released Bradley's soul-infused debut album, "No Time for Dreaming," in 2011; he was 62 years old.

Bradley recorded three more critically acclaimed works before dying of liver cancer in 2017, aged 68.

Grindmother, Becomes a Raucous Celebrity at Retirement Age

As a parting reminder that it's never too late to follow your dream, a Canadian artist known as Grindmother — a portmanteau of grindcore, an ear-splitting musical genre, and grandmother — released her debut album in 2016, aged 67. Grindmother (her real name is not known) garnered millions of views for her performances of the extreme punk/metal music online.

Pete Townshend famously sang "I hope I die before I get old" in The Who's 1965 hit "My Generation." Townshend, now 79 years old, is touring this year alongside bandmate Roger Daltrey, who is 80. "My Generation" is not on the setlist of songs they intend to perform.

Chris Wheatley is an author and music journalist in Oxford, England. He has written for London Jazz News, Longreads, Loudwire, Record Collector, Songlines and other websites and publications. He will tell you he has too many records, too many guitars and not enough cats. Read More