Charley Crockett Was Raised By a Single Mother Who Inspired His Love of Music
"I don’t look like what a traditional country audience expects or maybe wants to see."
Published June 20 2025, 5:23 p.m. ET
Which comes first, the story or the music? For country singer Charley Crockett, his love of music fed into the stories that would eventually become his songs. In this chicken-or-egg scenario, the chicken and the egg are side-by-side. The story of how Charley came to be feels like a deleted scene from A Star is Born, the Bradley Cooper version.
The drug use involved isn't nearly as bad, but it's the way he was discovered that is cinematic.
According to Austin Monthly, after criss-crossing the United States with a guitar in hand, Charley landed in New York City. Like many artists, he quickly discovered the best place to play was on the hot Subway platforms. After getting together with other MTA musicians, they formed a band aptly called the Train Robbers.
That's where he was discovered. Years before he was found and lost again, Charley was born in a small Texas town. He started out with two parents and ended up with one.
Charley Crockett was raised in a single-parent home.
The year was 1984, and Charley had arrived only to spend his first year of life in a single-wide trailer in San Benito, Texas, per Texas Monthly. Things were crowded and made worse because the trailer was home to Charley's mom, dad, grandmother, and a half-brother and sister who were about a decade older.
His dad split early on, so Charley's mom moved them to Los Frenos, about 17 miles away.
They didn't have much, but what they did have was all of Charley's mother's CDs. On any given day, their home was filled with the sounds of Billie Holiday, Carole King, Bob Dylan, Harry Connick Jr., or local Tejano artists. Charley's obsession with music really took off when he was a teenager, spending summers in New Orleans with his uncle.
His interests expanded into jazz, big bands, and crooners. At age 17, Charley's mother gave him his first guitar. Eight years later, he was in New York.
Charley Crockett's ethnicity has sometimes made country music difficult.
The country music genre is not always very welcoming to Black performers. We saw this play out when Beyoncé dropped "Cowboy Carter". Let's just say the response from many fans of the genre was less than ideal. "I don’t look like what a traditional country audience expects or maybe wants to see," Charley said to The Guardian. He is of mixed Black, Cajun, Creole, and Jewish heritage.
Whether people know it or not, country music has always been divisive. Charley spoke about how being an outsider is partially what makes his music so important.
"When Hank Williams started making country music, they said very similar things about him that they said to me," he said. "Back then it was either country bumpkins or it was high society and that was it." With success coming for Charley faster than a freight train, it seems he is now a bit of both.