Youngest son of James Lafayette and Mary Davis Tillman, Charles worked with his father, a preacher, in evangelism, as well as painting houses, working as a traveling salesman for a music company out of Raleigh, North Carolina, and sang on a traveling wagon advertising Wizard Oil. He began his career in 1887 as a singing evangelist.
He formed his own music publishing house in Atlanta, Georgia, and put out 20 Gospel song collections. At one time, he was song leader at the Indian Spring Holiness Camp Meeting in Flovilla, Georgia. He was the first to publish the spiritual Old-Time Religion, which he heard blacks singing at a camp meeting in Lexington, South Carolina. His works include:
The Revival (Atlanta, Georgia: Charlie D. Tillman, 1890)
The Revival No. 1 (Atlanta, Georgia: Charlie D. Tillman, 1890)
The Revival No. 2 (Atlanta, Georgia: Charlie D. Tillman, 1896)
The Revival No. 3, 1899
The Revival No. 4 (Atlanta, Georgia: Charlie D. Tillman, 1903)
Sunday School and Revival (Atlanta, Georgia: Charlie D. Tillman, 1907)
The Revival No. 6 (Atlanta, Georgia: Charlie D. Tillman, 1910)
