On January 14, surrounded by friends, family, and the Carolinas Medical Center staff who came to love him, the man who protected Jimmy Buffett for three-plus decades was taken by cancer at age sixty-six. Charleston Miles had a booming voice (one that was pretty soulful when Buffett called on him to sing), a basso profundo laugh, and a smile wider than his last name. Miles mostly operated backstage or at stage right, but the six-foot-nine North Carolinian was an outsize and remarkable presence in the life of a Southern bard whose fame and resulting safety needs grew as the decades rolled on.
Miles came into the world in Westchester, New York. Measuring twenty-six inches at birth, he was the youngest of three tall siblings. When the family moved to Charlotte while Miles was in middle school, his rapid growth led to fallen arches and a period of wheelchair use. Charleston’s wife, Deborah, described that as a formative experience. “He had to learn to walk again,” she says.
Charleston Miles.
Gregarious, driven, and optimistic, Miles not only learned to walk but went on to shoot hoops for Lees-Macrae College in Banner Elk, North Carolina, before being recruited by the University of North Carolina Asheville. It was at UNC that he met Deb. “He’s six-nine and I’m five-two,” she says with a laugh. “That’s kind of cliché right? One of the other basketball players introduced us. And he told me later, ‘When you walked away, he said, I’m going to marry that little girl.’”
What follows is a series of recollections from five people, including Deb, who understood and appreciated what a towering yet humble figure Miles truly was.
Deb Miles, Charleston’s wife and the love of his life for forty-five years: After graduation we came to Charlotte, and this was during the eighties. He had the opportunity to work for Xerox and some other jobs that, because of the recession, just never materialized. So he started doing commercial construction and worked his way up. He was one of the major guys building the Carolina Place Mall…He was standing in line to get us tickets to Janet Jackson. This local man approached him and asked him if he wanted to work for him, doing security. He was like, “No, I’m good.” But he had been a bouncer at nightclubs, that kind of thing. He was like, Damn, I really don’t want to do it. The money’s not that great. Then he went to work his first big concert and had to break up a big fight. He’s like, “Oh my gosh, that was so fun. I got paid to break up a fight!”
Mike Ramos, a manager for Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band since the late 1980s: Early on, there were security people who didn’t work out. When we first met Charleston [around 1992], he was working the venue we were playing—Carowinds. Jimmy saw his ability to manage people and said, “I’d like you to be part of my team. Can you start right now?”
Deb Miles: He was so excited. He was pretty secure in his career at that point. I said, “Take a chance, right?” He said, “Well, I want to make sure you guys are taken care of.” Because at that point we had had our oldest son. Once he got out there, he was just hooked. It was such a professional operation. Everybody did their jobs and did their jobs well. Before I knew it, he was talking about all the friends he had made, and they really became a family.
Lucy Buffett, aka LuLu, Jimmy’s younger sister: I remember thinking, Wow, Jimmy needs a bodyguard? Now Jimmy’s really made the big time. But Charleston was so, I mean, there for us and the family. It was just an immediate level of comfort with him—as if he were family.
Mac McAnally, singer/songwriter and member of the Coral Reefer Band: In ’93, ’94, Jimmy asked if I would come out…And that’s when I met Charleston—at the rehearsal for that tour. I was a big Southern boy who wanted to eat everything in every city we went to. Charleston and [fellow Coral Reefers watchdog Hallie Hare] were big eaters. So we started hanging together. In Charleston, South Carolina, I just happened to walk into a place that had all-you-can-eat steamed garlic crabs. Charleston and Hallie and a couple more of the crew guys had just sat down. And they just kept bringing buckets of crab out, and I jumped in there with them. It finally got down to where it was just me and Charleston eating crabs, and the whole staff of the restaurant was out there sitting in folding chairs around us, watching us. Charleston was like, “Hallie, we finally got somebody out here in the band that can eat with us.”
Mike Ramos: Aside from his big teddy-bear sweetheart self, he had this ability to immediately calm a crowd with his large presence. He’s six-foot-nine with this gigantic smile. He could light up an entire venue. Put him on the big screen with that big smile and he’d just make you feel so comfortable and at home. Night after night I’d witness his ability to turn an unruly situation into a harmonious lovefest. By the end of an altercation at a show with drunk fans beating the shit out of each other, he had them hugging each other and exchanging phone numbers. It was amazing.
Miles tosses Mike Ramos’s son.
Deb Miles: People say he was a bodyguard. Me, personally, I said he practices more diplomacy…he would tell people “you can’t do this” without hurting their feelings. That is, unless they took it to another level. Jimmy—he was there to keep him safe, but he eliminated the need for Jimmy to be the bad guy. Before the days when you had the earpieces and all that stuff, they just read each other so well. Charleston told me this many times: “We don’t even have to talk to each other. He can look at me and he’ll look in a certain direction, like, ‘Watch this over here.’ We didn’t even have to use words.”
Lucy Buffett: We were at the Biloxi auditorium. This would have been in the nineties. And Daddy, he’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and this was going to be probably one of the last concerts he might have gone to. He was struggling, trying to get up the steps. Charleston saw that. He said, “Come on, Hallie.” They just quietly and effortlessly, one on each side, put an arm under my dad’s arms and then lifted him up and walked up the four steps and then kind of put him down. But it was like it never happened. It was so beautifully done that my dad wasn’t embarrassed, right?
Deb Miles: Jimmy’s mother [Peets Buffett]—he would pick her up in her wheelchair and take her everywhere. And she said, “I love you like a son. The way you take care of my son, I love you for that.” And they said that his mother asked for Charleston to be a pallbearer at her funeral.
Lucy Buffett: It was 2000 when I first started LuLu’s [Sunset Grill]. I had a fall and I dislocated my elbow… So on the other side of the [New Orleans] French Quarter, a great salsa band was playing. And I said, “I can’t go because of my arm.” Charleston said, “Baby, you’re not gonna have any problem with me.” So I got to enjoy the benefits of Charleston being my bodyguard for a night. You walk in the door, it’s busy, and people are dancing and smoking and drinking and jostling. He’d be like, “Come on.” He just parted the sea, and it was hilarious, and a dear memory of me being able to have a little bit of Charleston to myself.
Mike Ramos: Back in the mid-nineties, Jimmy discovered Charleston had a great voice. He would see Charleston singing every word to his songs…Then one day Jimmy said, “Hey, why don’t you come up and sing My Girl with us?” And he did it and blew the crowd away. Seeing this huge dude get up and belt this song out on key—after a while Jimmy put an end to that because he noticed Charleston was kind of stealing the show.
Kenny Chesney, country musician: There were so many nights I would be up on stage and I would look over and see Charleston on stage right, sitting on a road case, just having the time of his life dancing and smiling, listening to the show. Mac sent me this picture the other day: I was playing Lambeau Field…and I went over there and I pulled Charleston’s ass out from the side of the stage and made him sing with me. It was just a spur of the moment for both of us, and he had so much fun with it. Those are the things I think about—how much joy he brought me.
You know, as fun as it is out there, it can be a mundane existence. And Charleston always seemed to bring sunlight. No matter how tired and exhausted I was, my day changed. We became really good friends…he met my mom and they struck up a friendship. And every Christmas he would call me or text me and tell me to be sure I told my mother that he was thinking about her.
Miles with award-winning artists Mac McAnally and Kenny Chesney.
Mike Ramos: Charleston took his job very seriously with a big smile. During stressful times, like after the Orlando nightclub shooting back in 2016, and then in 2017 there was Las Vegas…those two massacres changed the game in celebrity security. We would spend hours each day planning every one of Jimmy’s movements. We brought in extra security and went through every backup scenario in case the shit hit the fan. So he had to change his game, basically. He began wearing a bulletproof vest, and he learned a lot of tactics from former Secret Service agents. And thankfully we never had to experience any situation like that, but I know this: Charleston would have taken a bullet for Jimmy.
Mac McAnally: Because Jimmy was a professional, there were things that upset him in shows sometimes. And Charleston could sponge it up. If something was bothering Jimmy at intermission, Charleston would walk into his dressing room and say, “Give it to me. Let me have it.” Jimmy had all this steam that was gonna mess with the show in the second half, and he would just let him have it—everything he wanted to get off his chin. He would get it off to Charleston, and they’d both walk back out somehow and pat one another on the back and nail the second half of the show. And nobody knows that. That was a service he provided that nobody knew anything about.
Mike Ramos: They both learned they had cancer about the same time. So without getting into detail, I will say they were very supportive of each other. Many, many, many conversations in person, on the phone. They went through cancer for four years together. Charleston obviously lasted a little longer. But imagine going through that with somebody you’ve known for thirty years…they had a very special relationship.
Deb Miles: [Jimmy’s daughter] Savannah gave him one of the necklaces of Jimmy’s ashes that the family got. On Christmas Day, Jimmy’s birthday, he sat downstairs and he lit a candle. And you could tell he was, you know, in his feelings. He let that candle burn the entire Christmas day, and he said, “This candle is for Jimmy,” and put it on the sofa right in front of him. He was very quiet and pensive that day. He was devastated, devastated about Jimmy.
Mike Ramos: Jimmy loved Charleston. Charleston loved Jimmy. And I’m pretty sure they’re hanging out right now, wherever they are, and it’s a role reversal. Maybe Jimmy’s protecting Charleston now, somehow.
Mac McAnally: I would say with some certainty that out of all the shows I ever played with the two of those guys, uniformly, Jimmy Buffett was the happiest guy in the building or the stadium or the arena or whatever it was, and Charleston Miles was the second happiest. Nobody loved what they were doing more than those two guys. They loved it every time. Every. Single. Time.
From left: Mike Ramos, Jimmy Buffett, Charleston Miles, and Robert Greenidge.
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