Charles Sawtelle
Best known for
Guitar
Charles Sawtelle was the soft-spoken guitar foundation of Hot Rize, a flatpicker known as "The Bluegrass Mystery" whose playing, recording engineering, and quiet leadership shaped one of the most influential bluegrass bands of the 1980s and 90s.
- Born September 20, 1946 in Austin, Texas; settled in Boulder, Colorado in the late 1970s.
- Co-founded Hot Rize on January 18, 1978 with Tim O'Brien (mandolin), Pete Wernick (banjo), and Mike Scap (guitar); when Scap left a few months later and Nick Forster joined on bass, Sawtelle moved to lead guitar — the lineup that defined the band.
- Played the silent-bassist character "Slade" in Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers, Hot Rize's western-swing comedic alter-ego that performed mid-show in vintage Western suits.
- Hot Rize won the inaugural IBMA Entertainer of the Year award in 1990 and earned a Grammy nomination for Take It Home (1990, Sugar Hill); Pete Goble's "Colleen Malone," cut on that album, won IBMA Song of the Year in 1991.
- Recorded and ran his Rancho deVille studio outside Boulder, engineering and producing for himself and other Front Range acts; led his side band Charles Sawtelle and the Whippets in the 1990s.
- Diagnosed with leukemia in 1993; received a bone marrow transplant in 1997.
- Died March 20, 1999 at age 52; his solo album Music From Rancho deVille was completed and released posthumously by Laurie Lewis with guests including Vassar Clements, Jerry Douglas, Norman Blake, Sam Bush, and Flaco Jiménez.
- Hot Rize was inducted into the IBMA Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame on September 18, 2025; Bryan Sutton has held the band's guitar chair in its post-1999 reunions.
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Hot RizePlayed on recordings with Hot Rize
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Charles SawtellePlayed on recordings with Charles Sawtelle