Atlanta’s LGBTQ community is left reeling at the news of the sudden passing of drag legend Mr. Charlie Brown.
Western Memorial Grove announced Charlie’s death on March 22 in a post that said that his death “came as a great surprise to her family, and they are in complete and utter disbelief.” He was 74.
In his fifth decade of performing, there was no drag queen quite as prolific as the “Bitch of the South.” A pillar of Atlanta’s LGBTQ history, Charlie was on the cover of Georgia Voice in summer of 2023 amid shopping the manuscript of his forthcoming memoir, written with the help of journalist Rich Eldredge.
Friends and members of the community remembered Charlie fondly following the news of his death.
“Charlie was the very first Queen we hired and of course we didn’t make her audition,” Yvonne Lame, the owner of Lips Atlanta, wrote on Facebook. “She had already been a star for decades, and her talent and reputation preceded her. I remember sitting there with Fred, Charlie, and Michael describing our vision for Lips Atlanta and literally begging her to come on board to be our main star, our weekend show hostess and MC. In great Charlie fashion, she didn’t immediately say yes but after a few days of probably asking around about us she excepted. And the rest is drag history. Thanks to Charlie Lips Atlanta is and was an immediate success… We will immortalize her here at Lips with a portrait of her in the center hall. A photograph of Charlie in her glory days doing what she so loved to do more than anything, perform.”
“My best friend and drag mother Charlie Brown gained his wings tonight,” Mona Lott Moore-Brown wrote on Facebook. “I miss you already and love you forever, fly high my angel. Thanks for the laughs.”
“The first time I saw you perform at Backstreet, I sat right up front and you caressed my face and sang to me and I was over the MOON!” Allison Funderburk wrote. “Your humor and charm [were] contagious. and everyone that ever met you or saw you perform fell in love with you! ‘If you can’t laugh at a 74-year-old fat, baldheaded man in a dress, you don’t have any business being out in Atlanta after dark.’”
“When I moved here, I met [Charlie] at [Lips Atlanta] and we hit it off… The conversation we had you would have thought we [had] known each other before I moved here,” Dana Counce said. “I can’t recall how she would introduce me on stage, but she always made me feel loved when I hit that stage.”