Charlie Dunn
Charles Russell Dunn was an American bootmaker of handmade Western, or cowboy boots for more than 80 years. Dubbed the "Michelangelo of cowboy boots," he first gained widespread notice in the wake of Jerry Jeff Walker's song "Charlie Dunn". By the time he retired in 1988 from Texas Traditions, his shop in Austin, he routinely charged up to $3,000 for a pair of boots, had a waiting list of hundreds of interested buyers willing to wait three years for delivery, and had made boots for a long list of celebrities, including Arnold Palmer, Mary Kay Place, Gene Autry, Slim Pickens, Don F Brooks, Harry Belafonte, Ernest Tubb, Peter Fonda, and Carole King.
Don Counts, who owned several pairs of Charlie's boots and lured him out of a premature retirement, described Charlie as "a real character, an elflike creature who captivated everybody." Known for his colorful language and broad sense of humor, Charlie in his customary black beret and cobbler's apron measured out at 5'4" and 135 pounds of pure imp. One friend noted that even though he was "quiet-spoken," he could "tell stories all day and all night."
When Charlie died at 95 from complications arising from a stroke, he had passed along his bootmaking mastery to Lee Miller, his heir-designate, thus assuring the survival of exceptional bootmaking in the traditional, handmade manner. As with four generations of Dunns before him, Charlie had persevered in and prolonged the production of custom boots, despite the general trend toward bootmaking in factories. One of a handful of survivors of an endangered species—the half artisan, half artist maker of once-common items—Charlie managed, in passing his skills to a new generation, to make sure that the world continued to enjoy prized bootmaking.
Early life
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. His parents Molly and Thomas hailed from Tennessee.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. 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." Charlie took his first paying job at six, emptying spittoons for ten cents a week, but it ended quickly. By the next year he was working alongside his father in the shop of Ed Lewis, a one-legged bootmaker. 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. He learned quickly, and produced his first pair of custom boots when he was 11, a birthday present to himself. 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. 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.
Early career
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. 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. 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. 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. At some point, he spent time in Paris again. He also worked at Fort Sill, OK, for his first of many stints as a bootmaker for the U.S. Army. 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."Charlie served in the Navy during World War I. 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. 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?" 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. 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 Cleo. Their marriage lasted until her death in Austin in 1985. They eventually had four children—Louise and sons Creighton, Tom, and Donald.
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."
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. By decade's end, he was in Austin, where he took a job at Lone Star Boots off Congress Ave. He lived on West 2nd St., a short distance from the store, in what is now the heart of downtown Austin. 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. 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.
Middle career
Capitol Saddlery
Charlie finally settled down in 1949. For the next 25 years, he worked at Capitol Saddlery on Lavaca St. in central Austin under the eye, and sometimes the thumb, of Thomas Casper "Buck" Steiner, a legend for his rodeo skills, among others. Capitol Saddlery was already well known for its saddles and tack, marketing them through Montgomery Ward's and Sears catalogs as well as to ranchers across Texas. Charlie extended the tradition of excellence to footwear, principally custom western boots. Though the same age, Steiner and Charlie literally stood in contrast, big Steiner towering over the "bantam rooster." Their personalities contrasted sharply, too: Steiner hard, gruff, and with a colorful past, befitting his Rodeo Hall of Fame image; Charlie, elf-like, mischievous, a talker, and family man. Yet, out of need and mutual respect for excellence, they managed to work together for a long time.By the 1960s, Charlie's boots were well known—and expensive. His custom boots routinely sold for $500 to more than $1,000 in today's dollars. An incident from the early-1960s highlights both the value of Charlie's creations and the tension between Charlie and Steiner. Vice-president Lyndon Johnson wanted a pair of Charlie's boots and sent Sam Houston Johnson, his brother, to get Charlie to come to the courthouse to fit him because he was, according to Charlie's account, "sort of tied up." After being "checked out by the FBI and all," Charlie started out the door to take the measurements. Steiner stopped him, saying, "I wasn't going to do any such thing. He said if Lyndon Johnson wanted his measure taken, he could come over to the saddlery like everybody else." When an interviewer asked if Steiner forbade the trip because he was a Republican, Charlie retorted, "Hell, he wasn't any Republican. He was a damn fool." Charlie never made a pair of boots for LBJ.
The market for custom cowboy boots, anything construed as "cowboy" really—from turquoise jewelry to five-window Fords—grew dramatically in the 1970s with the rise of the "cosmic cowboy," "progressive country," and "outlaw music" culture centered in Austin. Together with the sharp rise in disposable income from "cowboy capitalism" in the black market, the Austin music scene generated high demand for Charlie's boots. Jerry Jeff Walker's "Charlie Dunn" both reflected this trend and accelerated it. Besides a paean to Charlie's artistry and skill, Walker describes sources of conflict apparent to any visitor:
After the song's release, prices soared into the thousands, though Porter Wagoner's diamond-encrusted pair fetched $25,000! And with Charlie's growing popularity came Steiner's deepening resentment. One observer noted, "When Charlie began to attract some publicity... the boss got jealous and a bad situation developed between them." While Steiner was "countin' his gold" and buying ranches in the Austin area, Charlie built boots for $3.25 an hour. In 1974, Charlie asked Steiner for a 5¢ per hour raise. Steiner refused, and Charlie quit. Though he had threatened to retire several times before, this time he left for good, but not before, legend has it, he dismantled the wooden lasts created for thousands of customers, rendering them useless. It was, according to one observer, Charlie's way of "getting back" at Steiner. At 75, after 25 years at Capitol Saddlery, Charlie retired. When asked whether he had been treated fairly there, Charlie replied, "About as fairly as anyone else around there was, I suppose."