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Charles Brown (September 13, 1922 – January 21, 1999), born in Texas City, TX was an American blues singer and pianist whose soft-toned, slow-paced blues-club style influenced the development of blues performance during the 1940s and 1950s. He had several hit recordings, including "Drifting Blues" and "Merry Christmas Baby".

In the late 1940s a rising demand for blues was driven by an increasing white teenage audience in the South which quickly spread north and west. Blues shouters got the attention, but also greatly influential was what writer Charles Keil dubbs "the postwar Texas clean-up movement in blues" led by stylists such as T-Bone Walker, Amos Milburn and Charles Brown. Their singing was lighter, more relaxed and they worked with bands and combos that had saxophone sections and used arrangements.

Brown signed with Aladdin Records and his 1945 recording on that label of the bestseller "Driftin' Blues" with a small combo was a typical club blues song. The single was on the R&B charts for six months, putting Brown at the forefront of a musical evolution that changed American musical performance. His style dominated the influential Southern California Club scene on Central Avenue during that period and he influenced such performers as Floyd Dixon, Cecil Gant, Ivory Joe Hunter, Percy Mayfield, Johnny Ace, and Ray Charles.

He is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and received both the National Endowment for the Arts' National Heritage Fellowship and the W.C. Handy Award.

Brown died in 1999 in Oakland, California.