He was a founder member of the High Level Ranters, playing fiddle and smallpipes on their first record, Northumberland for Ever, but he subsequently left the group.
Correcting for this by using a very sharp reed in the smallpipes and pulling out the tuning slide of the piccolo caused intonation problems.
During the 1950s and 1960s, he invited prominent uilleann pipers, including the McPeakes, Seamus Ennis and Leo Rowsome, to Northumberland to play at concerts.
[4] Similarly, when the triennial International Bagpipe Festival at Strakonice in Southern Bohemia was founded, Josef Režný persuaded Charlton to come as a representative of the Northumbrian Pipers' Society.
He was driving from his home in Gateshead to his brother's funeral in Lesbury, in northern Northumberland, when he had a fatal road accident.