Charlie Norman
Charlie Norman (Karl-Erik Albert Norman; 4 October 1920 – 12 August 2005) was a Swedish musician and entertainer. He is seen as Sweden’s leading boogie-woogie piano player in the 1940s, but he could play many styles on the piano. He worked with stars like Alice Babs and Sickan Carlsson, wrote music for films, and acted in a few. His boogie-woogie version of Edvard Grieg’s Anitra’s Dance caused a big fuss in Norway.
He was born in Ludvika, central Sweden. He got into music at a young age and played trumpet in the school band while also studying piano. His parents wanted him to have a more traditional trade, so after school he worked as a lathe operator at ASEA. In his spare time he led a dance orchestra and played the piano. His group won a competition in Borlänge in 1937, and he was invited to join the Sven Fors Orchestra. His first professional job came in the summer of 1937 in Varberg. He made his radio debut in 1938 and later worked with leaders Håkan von Eichwald and Seymour Österwall.
In 1942, Norman got tuberculosis and spent a long time in hospital. While there, he began writing arrangements for recording sessions and made a correspondence course in arrangement for dance bands. He married Dagny Knutsson in 1949. They had a son, Lennie, and a daughter, Lena.
By the early 1940s Norman was already a skilled boogie-woogie pianist, a style that became his signature. His first record, Charlies Boogie, came out in 1941. In 1949 he reworked Grieg’s Anitra’s Dance as Anitra’s Dance Boogie, which led to strong reactions from the Grieg Foundation in Norway and the withdrawal of some copies, even though more than 10,000 copies had sold. The piece stayed popular in his concerts.
Norman performed abroad several times in the 1940s, including a Paris television appearance in 1947 with Edith Piaf. In 1949 he played for American troops in Frankfurt. From 1950 he hosted radio shows such as Nattugglan (The Night Owl), The Charlie Norman Show, and Charlie in School. In 1951 he formed a trio with Rolf Berg and Hasse Burman and toured widely. He made many recordings with Swedish singer Alice Babs, and one of these earned Sweden’s first gold record. He kept working with Babs for years and even helped bring her back from retirement in 1990.
Norman appeared on radio programs like Dagens Revy and on TV shows for children and families. He also wrote music for many films and even for the American TV series Foreign Intrigue, which was shown in Sweden. He was known for his humor and often wrote his own material. In the 1970s and 1980s he toured the Canary Islands with his son Lennie Norman and Ronnie Gardiner to entertain Swedish tourists. He also performed at restaurants in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. In the 1990s he sometimes played with Robert Wells.
Charlie Norman died on 12 August 2005 in Danderyd, Sweden, from skeletal cancer.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 05:16 (CET).