Another loss to the Covid virus. A fine baseball player in the Negro Leagues - Charlie broke the color barrier in Country and Western music. One of the finest singing voices of that genre!
I'm praying for that vaccine before we lose too many more.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/charley-pride-dead-obit-192455/
Each day it seems Covid-19 takes another great name away from us. I pray for those who suffer everywhere, but especially how it has effected the world of music. I know there is light at the end of the tunnel, but it's hard to see so many lives lost. I can't wait till I can go and see live music again!
Meet him once at an old theatre in Johnson City, Tennessee in 1969. It was originally an old vaudeville theater but in the late 30's they put a screen on the stage and began showing movies. It closed due to lack of business in 1967 so a local promoter rented it and took the screen out and began booking country music acts. I worked there briefly in summer of 1969 and we had Jerry Lee Lewis one weekend, another weekend the Porter Wagoner show with Dolly Parton and another was Johnny Cash and last weekend Charley Pride and I got to meet all of them as I was the stage announcer and helper. Johnny Cash wasn't happy with his dressing room but I think we got it fixed. I remember him right in my face and he wasn't happy. Never forget Dolly. She stayed on Porter's bus until it was time for her to join Porter for their songs together but she eventually was right there close back stage. I never spoke to her but she was strikingly pretty and an incredible figure. She was part of Porter Wagoner's show then but it wasn't long I think she was a draw on her own.
Charley Pride was extremely nice to everyone and was on RCA records I think. This was 5 years after Lyndon Johnson signed the civil rights act which ended segregation but I think a lot of the young white girls in eastern Tennessee then were kinda racist but they loved Charley. I remember a waitress who worked across the street saying "I'm not that crazy about colored people eating over at the diner now but Charlie Pride is different. That is one colored man I would go out with"!! I will never forget her saying that. Her racism apparently was selective. I think her name was Abby and had blonde hair in a bee hive tease style which was popular then with more or less working class white girls. She was crazy too about Waylon Jennings and Conway Twitty. And I remember she, the owner and others at that diner didn't believe that summer's moon landing was real. I found that so amazing. I was at a loss for words. There was a stack of morning newspapers next to the cash register and I watched Walter Cronkite and his coverage of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the surface of the moon the night before. So as I paid for my breakfast I bought a paper and said "How about that, we made it to the moon!" AMD she said "You don't believe that do you? Why any dummy can see it up there and tell it ain't big enough to put that ship on it". I looked at the owner and he said " She is right. Don't believe half of what ya read in that paper. They will have you believing you came from a monkey if you do". It kinda freaked me out. Only went in there a time or two after that then I moved to New Orleans where a friend from Virginia had a job for me. That job wasn't what I expected so didn't stay long but man did they have some great horn, acoustic bass players and drummers in the French Quartet.
It was an okay experience musically but I had become friends with cats who smoked weed and were into The Doors, Big Brother and The Holding Company, Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix etc. And one was a biker named Sandy Booze (that last name may have been a joke) and he had the Allman Brothers first album and played it for me in his house trailer. That resulted in me seeing them in 1970. Duane Allman playing with that bottle on his finger and the energy and emotion coming from him was like sticking my finger in an electric socket. And the other 5 were right with him with an incredible sound that I had never experienced. I was hooked. And to this day at age 74 it's my favorite band and music.
Robert - was you BORN a ramblin' man or did you just study hard? 😉 I love your story! I wish I had met Charley! Sorry that I misspelled his name in the headline.
This was Charley's first recording. Kind of an early predecessor to songs like Robert Cray's "Smoking Gun". Great song!
Here's Doug Sahm and Band (GREAT ALBUM! - Dr. John, Levon - great cast!) doing San Antone. I love this version, too!
