Charlie Brown, the legendarily bawdy and bold drag queen who graced countless stages across Atlanta over the past half-century, took his final bow on Thursday.
Brown died at Piedmont Hospital due to an infection that set in recently following heart surgery earlier this year, according to Atlanta journalist Richard Eldredge. Brown was 74.
Tributes poured in on social media Friday as news of Brown’s death spread.
“Dim the stage light, a true legend has left this world!” said a Facebook post by Atlanta drag bar and restaurant Lips Atlanta. “The amazing and talented Mr. Charlie Brown, a legendary Atlanta entertainer and icon has passed away.”
“The Lips family is eternally grateful that this fabulous queen was a part of our lives,” they added.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens’ Division of LGBTQ Affairs issued a statement about Brown’s death, saying in part, “The City of Atlanta joins the rest of the community in mourning the passing of Charlie Brown. Charlie has been an integral part of Atlanta’s vibrant cultural landscape for decades, and his contributions to our city will be forever cherished.”
Dickens presented Brown with the Phoenix Award — the city’s highest honor — in 2022.
‘I crawled my ass out of the country’
Charlie Brown was born on Dec. 29, 1949 in Westmoreland, Tennessee. He graduated from Macon County High School in 1968 and briefly attended Draughon Business College in Nashville before joining the U.S. Air Force.
The Air Force kicked Brown out for being gay, and he moved back to Nashville, according to an excerpt from his forthcoming memoirs co-written with Eldredge. Shortly after this, Brown made his drag debut at the city’s Watch Your Hat and Coat Saloon.
“I crawled my ass out of the country and my daddy always told me, ‘Look before you leap,’” Brown told WABE in 2022. “So I became streetsmart and got into fun things, got into some messes.”
Charlie Brown took part in an oral history interview in April 2019 as part of the Gender and Sexuality Oral History Project at Georgia State University Library.
Brown met his now-husband Fred Wise in Knoxville in 1977 and the couple moved to Atlanta in 1978.
This is where Brown built up and cemented his status as a local drag legend.
Brown performed at the long-gone Atlanta gay bar Sweet Gum Head in the 1970s and hosted a cabaret show for 15 years at Backstreet, the iconic 24-hour dance club that closed in 2004. He opened his own club in Underground Atlanta after that.
Brown performed at several other Atlanta venues in the years since then, including Lips Atlanta and X Midtown.
Brown’s memoirs have been completed and will be released later this year to commemorate his 75th birthday, according to Eldredge.
“He was nervous the night before the [February heart] surgery so 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.’ That reassured him a lot,” Elredge told WABE on Friday via text.
Brown said in 2022 that the book will be somewhat of a love letter to Atlanta.
“Atlanta’s been wonderful,” he said. “I’m so thankful that we had the opportunity to go through the period we did and be there and help the growth of it and open doors for the younger entertainers.”
This story will be updated with news about a memorial service for Brown.
