Charlie Dunn

Charlie was born September 19, 1898, on a riverboat coursing the White River, "between two towns in Arkansas," the third of ten children for Molly and Thomas Dunn. His great-great grandfather, Winfield Scott Duam, made boots in County Cork, Ireland, starting a lineage of bootmakers that reached to young Charlie, five generations. The name change to "Dunn" occurred "a few generations later," presumably in the transition to the United States.[10] His parents Molly and Thomas hailed from Tennessee.[11]

At three, the family moved "in a covered wagon" to Texas, settling in Glory, a tiny village outside Paris, a town of 9,000 near the Oklahoma border about 100 miles northeast of Dallas.[12] He attended the local elementary school, though, he recalled, "mama taught us ten children how to read and write and do our 'rithmetic before we even started in school."[13] Charlie took his first paying job at six, emptying spittoons for ten cents a week, but it ended quickly.[14] By the next year he was working alongside his father in the shop of Ed Lewis, a one-legged bootmaker.[15] The following year, at age eight, Charlie moved in with Lewis in Paris because, he explained, "I figured I could learn more from someone other than my father." The move possibly was a sign of difficulties in their relationship already.[16] He learned quickly, and produced his first pair of custom boots when he was 11, a birthday present to himself.[17] The Dunns, like the families of most bootmakers, moved frequently, chasing steady work. Charlie remembered living briefly in several towns, including Tyler, before spending three years in Fort Worth, where his father opened the Dunn Boot Shop on the corner of Main and Exchange Streets.[18] The stockyards and broader ranch culture provided likely customers for boots. In 1913 or so, the Dunns moved in covered wagons to Arkansas, "to get away from the big city," Charlie recalled.[19]

At fifteen, Charlie moved out after a dispute with his father about money, possibly over Charlie's use of funds to purchase a suit, his first.[19] His high school education apparently at an end—a later Census Report notes that he had finished two years of high school—Charlie hit the road.[20] The precise sequence of his stops as an itinerant bootmaker during this period remains murky, but he settled briefly in Newport County, AR, then shifted to Fort Smith, AR, where he worked for a local bootmaker.[21] To recuperate from a bout with smallpox, he convalesced under his mother's care, probably in Tyler, TX, for six months before striking out on his own for good.[22] At some point, he spent time in Paris again.[19] He also worked at Fort Sill, OK, for his first of many stints as a bootmaker for the U.S. Army.[23] According to Charlie, "I never stayed at a job after I felt I'd learned all I could from it. Sometimes I'd leave after a week, but I was never without work."[12]

Charlie served in the Navy during World War I.[7] Liking the way that the sailor's cap hid his already balding pate, he began wearing a black beret when he was discharged, and kept doing so the rest of his life.[24] His next stop was Memphis, where he studied art for a couple of years and incorporated another lifelong, signature practice: an emphasis on the anatomy of the foot in fitting boots. His art teacher stressed the importance of the skeleton in making accurate depictions. Charlie embraced this approach: "How can you make a portrait or paint a face unless you know the bone structure underneath?"[25] To further his understanding of anatomy, he soon earned a certification, probably by mail, from Dr. Scholl's School of Podiatry, an achievement to which he referred proudly the rest of his life.[26] He used his profound knowledge of the foot structure to create a custom "last," or wooden model of the foot.

In Memphis Charlie courted and married 26-year-old Cecil ("Cecile") Cleo. Their marriage lasted until her death in Austin in 1985. They eventually had four children—Louise and sons Creighton, Tom, and Donald.[27]

Sometime after Memphis, Charlie for the first and only time sought work in a boot factory. In Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, he took a job in the Stetson shoe and boot factory. He explained why he left soon after: "In a factory you do just one or two operations at the most... And that's all you do. You make stitches or soles. You become a part of that machine. And, you have just about as much individuality as IT does." "From then on," he noted, "I never messed with workin' in a factory."[28]

Peripatetic, as befit a bootmaker, Charlie traversed the continent down to San Antonio, where, in 1933, he again fashioned boots for the Army, this time at Fort Sam Houston.[29] By decade's end, he was in Austin, where he took a job at Lone Star Boots off Congress Ave.[5] He lived on West 2nd St., a short distance from the store, in what is now the heart of downtown Austin.[30] While working at Lone Star he made a pair of boots with a unique design element: an intricate yellow rose inlaid into the upper of the boot. He set the boots in the window, hoping to attract a buyer. A short time later, Ernest Tubb, a seminal figure in western music, caught notice and purchased the boots.[5] A legend was born. Once tempted to turn to a career in art, he instead had decided to "take my love of art and put it in bootmaking" after watching artists starving in the Depression. For him, a boot was a sculpture. Works from the 1940s demonstrate that he had achieved a special marriage of art and craft.[31]

Charlie Dunn in his bootmaking shop. Photo by Ben Mason courtesy of Don Counts.

Don Counts, Austin physician to the music community, was one of the many who had come to depend on Charlie to fit him properly when no one else ever had. But unlike the many who made that claim, Counts saw not just a bootmaker, but a "dying art form moving to Mesquite."[41] Charlie knew the stakes, too: "Bootmaking is an art that's going to be lost before too long."[19] Counts vowed to talk Charlie into returning to Austin to make boots—"I had to get him back" —and did.[42]

Counts's astute awareness of Charlie's historical and cultural importance—beyond his artistry and skill—is not surprising. He worked tirelessly and often without pay for the musicians who played at the Armadillo World Headquarters and Antone's Nightclub, among other Austin venues. From the 1970s onward, Austin musicians, and many others from across the country, knew him as a medical source who met their needs in an affordable manner. His many clients who could pay—and several well-known musicians counted him as their personal physician—counted on him to work with their difficult and far-flung schedules. After decades of helping musicians, he served as a consultant to the founding board of the Health Alliance of Austin Musicians (HAAM), which seeks to provide affordable health care for musicians without insurance. Thus, just as he recognized the critical value in keeping alive, literally, the blues of Jimmy Reed or James Cotton, so, too, did he recognize that preserving Charlie's bootmaking was preserving a vanishing cultural practice.

Counts, as most folks did, had fallen under the spell of the impish cobbler, too, so the business and cultural interests were inextricably woven together with the personal. The atmosphere from the beginning was less like a business than like a close-knit family, complete with resentments and arguments and, eventually, reconciliation between Charlie, staff, manager, and owner.[43] Carrlyn Short, soon to be Lee Miller's wife, played perhaps the crucial role in establishing an efficient, productive, and harmonious environment in which several strong, artistic personalities vied for expression.

Joining Counts in the quest to bring Charlie back to Austin was Steve Wiener, 24 years old at the time, a recent University of Texas graduate, and a guitar player in the Austin scene. He knew Charlie from going to Capitol Saddlery, "just to hang out, " after buying his first boots there in the early 1970s. Wiener went to the shop about every six months, ostensibly to check the hides in stock, but just as much to chat with Charlie, for whom he was developing deep respect and affection. When Counts, a close friend, asked Wiener to be partners in bringing Charlie out of retirement, Wiener quickly agreed. He served as on-site manager of the new concern and handled publicity for the next 3 ½ years.[44]

Counts presented Charlie with a deal: Charlie would have his own shop, with apprentices to teach and direct; a salary equal to three times what he had earned under Buck Steiner; free medical care for Cecile and him; two weeks paid vacation; two weeks sick leave; and a place to live.[45] Skeptical, Charlie resisted: "At first I told [Counts and Weiner] no. I told them I was not interested in managing a place" or "hav[ing] my name on a bank note. " Counts, who later secured a $10,000 loan to finance the project, assured Charlie that we would be free to make boots, not payrolls.[46] Charlie relented: "They said they would take care of that [business] end... I said that would suit me all right. "[47]

Charlie's new shop opened as "Texas Traditions" in September 1977 on College Ave. off South Congress, where it remains today. A renovated bungalow in front was Charlie and Cecile's residence, and a converted garage held the shop and office.[19] Why did Charlie agree? The money? No, that had never driven him to excel. Rather, Charlie knew that "Bootmaking is an art that's gonna be lost before too long."[19] Indeed, other legendary Texas bootmaking outfits—Lucchese, Justin, Nocona, and Tony Lama—had long since "gone factory" or in other cases, disappeared. Customers—former and potential—knew it: more than 50 clamored to have Charlie tend to them if he started back.[19]

More importantly, Charlie knew that for the tradition to endure he had to pass along what he had learned from his 70+ years of bootmaking: "I want to work and teach as many young men as I can so I can leave something behind besides cold marble. I'd rather leave someone behind who'd do it my way. "[48] Counts and Wiener understood this critical part, too: Besides committing to financing and managing the new shop, respectively, they actively recruited top prospects from Oklahoma State's bootmaking school to serve under Charlie. Hopeful apprentices recognized the opportunity: They applied from all over the country and across the Atlantic. The experience of one apprentice who soon joined Charlie at Texas Traditions, Lee Miller, exemplifies the process that Charlie and his backers understood.

At 18 Miller began a two-year apprenticeship in a shoe repair shop in his native Vermont. Already dedicating himself to a career making boots, Miller was about to have an epiphany. One day a friend brought by a cassette tape of Jerry Jeff Walker's "Charlie Dunn, " the song that had brought Charlie's expertise to a popular audience. After listening to the song in his friend's van, Miller exclaimed, "That's what I want to do!" –make boots with Charlie Dunn, that is, "though I'll never be famous, " he thought. "That music did it. It was my inspiration" to work with Charlie.[8] Though he never had seen a pair of Charlie's boots, the idea stayed with him as he headed off to Oklahoma State's bootmaking school. After graduation, he bounced out to Utah to work with a bootmaker there.[8] Meanwhile, Weiner and Counts encouraged Steve Martin, one of the original apprentices at Texas Traditions, to recruit the best bootmaker apprentice he could think of, and Martin gave them the name of Miller, the "valedictorian" of the school, in Wiener's telling. They finally reached Miller in Utah after a four-month search. The search took so long, in part, because Miller had no phone service in Utah.[8]

As Lee Miller, later Charlie's designated heir puts it, "I wasn't sure about moving to Texas—but to work with Charlie Dunn was the opportunity of a lifetime for a young guy who wanted to make boots... [but] [w]hen I got to Austin and saw the way Charlie made boots, I knew I had to start all over... as Charlie's apprentice."[8] Simply put, "The minute I walked in the doors I knew it's where I wanted to be. The work they were doing here was like nothing I'd ever seen before."[49]

Jerry Jeff Walker's song "Charlie Dunn" and the rise of the Austin music and counterculture scenes formed the first wave of Charlie's national prominence. A backlog of interest from his three-year retirement and an escalation in regional contraband profits backed his second wave of popularity. When he opened Texas Traditions, the first customer was Peter Fonda, followed quickly by a member of the Grateful Dead. Others who were lucky enough to be measured could wait several months for delivery, though the shop produced three or four pairs every week.[62] Potential clients tried to bribe their way up the waiting list, offering as much as $500 in cash or even more in contraband.[44] Demand became even more surreal with the release of "Urban Cowboy" (1980): Boot orders were backed up for a year, with more than 200 potential customers wanting the chance to wait 2 ½ years to be measured, though no new names were accepted for the waiting list.[63] The price for a non-exotic pair had soared to $1000. "The high price was really more to discourage orders!" given the backlog, explained Miller.[64]

If Charlie two-stepped to prominence with Jerry Jeff Walker's song, he now rode to mythic status with the urban cowboys. He was featured in national media, such as the TV shows "Good Morning America" and "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," and magazines such as "Travel & Leisure" and "Us."[8] Even the increasingly reclusive Elizabeth Taylor sought his boots, writing by hand, "To Charlie. I need a pair of your beautiful boots. See you soon. Elizabeth Taylor."[48] Charlie waited a year for her to come by, then lamented, "I wouldn't mind measuring her for hip boots. But any lady that would keep an 84-year-old man in suspense that long, I just don't know... There oughta be a law."[14] He was known around the world, and probably had become the best-known maker of western boots the world has ever seen. For all the attention, however, Charlie remained humble about his artistry:

That song by Jerry Jeff Walker made people know me... And, of course, it made a whole lotta people want to buy boots from me. Some wanted comfort, others just wanted the – prestige you could say – of owning a pair of boots by Charlie Dunn. That's important for some people, I guess... prestige. None of my business why a person wants to own a pair of boots I made. But I do tell folks one thing: Boots by Charlie Dunn are made for walkin' with ease. Not for walkin' over people.[50]

Lee Miller, Charlie, Don Counts on Charlie's 90th birthday.

Charlie retired from Texas Traditions, the shop he ran, on his 88th birthday, nine years almost to the day after he came out of his first retirement. He continued to live in the bungalow in front of the shop. When asked what he would say to someone asking if he would consider coming out of retirement a second time, Charlie snorted, "First I'll insult, then I'll shoot, them."[48] Charlie had built up Texas Traditions since he started it, but did not own it. Don Counts, local physician and financial backer who had brought Charlie out of retirement, sold the business to Carrlyn and Lee Miller, though Counts retained the property.[8] Miller received 3000 patterns, mostly of Charlie's designs, all of the ancient machinery, hides, and the immense good will created there.[49] In return, Counts asked Miller to maintain the physical property, pay the taxes, and, most important to Counts and countless thousands since, to "carry on the tradition." Miller and Counts concluded the arrangements with a handshake.[65] On his 90th birthday Charlie received several remarkable presents. The city of Austin declared September 19, 1977, "Charlie Dunn Day," noting that his "reputation for quality, perfect fit, and originality of design drew customers from all over the country."[66] Also, for the first time his works were exhibited publicly in two venerable venues, Wylie's, the longest running bar on Austin's infamous 6th Street, and Clarksville Café, which stood in wealthy West Austin and the neighborhood of its former African-American servants. The exhibitions, titled "Texas Roots, Texas Boots," lasted for a month and featured boots from the 1940s forward. Further, Charlie was featured on a local public television program and in the local print media, as well.[67]

Charlie soon moved to Thunderbird Lake outside Smithville, a small community an hour east of Austin. There he lived peaceably with a companion until he died from complications from a stroke on September 23, 1993.[68] Charlie, 95, had made boots his entire life, save the first and last seven years of it.

Obituaries appeared nationwide via the AP wire. The New York Times noted that Charlie, "whose custom-made boots cost up to $3,000 and became a status symbol, rose to fame as a boot maker when Austin's music scene caught the nation's attention in the 1970's."[69] It failed to mention his longevity as a bootmaker. He was buried in black kangaroo boots with six rows of multicolored stitching made. Miller, his heir, remembered, "I made them for him in 1991, and he said they were his favorites. He told me he liked them so much, he slept in them."[70] At the funeral, Don Rountree, his grandson, and Lee Miller sang "Charlie Dunn" as Charlie was lowered into the grave. Many loyal clients gathered at his favorite restaurant afterward to swap stories and pay homage by wearing boots he had built.[71]

Charlie Dunn Making Boots. Photo courtesy of Don Counts.

Charlie had passed along to Lee Miller his most treasured secrets, including how to inlay the rose design, as well as his thousands of designs and lasts. Miller retained as the "tops man" Maximiliano ("Max") Fernandez, who had joined the shop during Charlie's watch. Miller has taken in apprentices and an intern, continuing the practice that brought him into Texas Traditions in the late 1970s. Commenting on the incredible unlikelihood of Charlie Dunn-style bootmaking still thriving in the 21st century, one apprentice remarked, "People don't do this anymore. In bootmaking you have to be lucky enough to find someone to teach you." She observed that the bootmakers coming in the wake of Charlie "have a legacy, and Lee [Miller] passes that down" to those he trains, just as he was trained.[72] Miller explains, simply, that "You have to give back. And this is our giving back."[73] Miller, Charlie's onetime apprentice, made the boots Charlie was buried in, his favorites.[74]

When Don Counts sold Texas Traditions to Lee and Carrlyn Miller upon Charlie's retirement, he had only one condition: Miller had to agree to carry on the tradition of bootmaking taught him by Charlie. After all, Counts saw Texas Traditions as his own legacy, his vision brought to fruition, of preserving the Texas tradition of crafting hand-made boots.[75] The thousands for whom Charlie made his exquisite "functional art" and hundreds more walking in his heir Miller's heritage creations and thousands yet to come, all can find comfort that the circle has not been broken, that in one small but important way, the 18th century has survived into the 21st.[76]

Charlie Dunn has been called the "Michelangelo of Cowboy Boots". His former apprentice and bootmaking-heir-designate Lee Miller recalls that the beret-clad bootmaker “played the part of a Picasso.” [77]