(This year, 2011, Charlie Pride will be in NB, Saint John May 14 and Moncton Casino April 10 )

CHARLEY PRIDE HAS ALWAYS DONE IT HIS WAY!

Interviewing Charley Pride  Saturday….I made a rather embarrassing  blunder  by suggesting he had appeared on the Nashville music scene at just the right time.

“No, my friend, it was a very bad time for an African American to break into country music,” he corrected me,” especially

as a young soutern lad

one from the US South…remember the lynchings, beatings, riots, marches?”

I had been thinking of the problems and indignities others of African decent… Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Ella Fitzgerald among many…had suffered in the 1930’s and my memory of those more recent terrible events had been temporarily forgotten. At his words, though, images came flooding back.

“You’re right,” I said,. “a terrible time. It’s difficult to believe now although acts of intolerance still happen”

To my mind had come the memory of a sunny 1969 morning driving into Washington DC listening to a radio voice recount horrific racial events the night before, then watching attendants of African heritage drive our car up a parking ramp and thinking will I ever see it again. After that walking a mile toward the city centre with our three year old daughter on my shoulders before seeing the first ‘so called’ white face, a military servicemen with a helmet and weapon on a Pentagon parapet..

“Nashville, however…music people seem to have been supportive?” I asked.

“Oh ,yes…Chet Atkins at RCA really took me under his wing for which I was grateful but it was Jack Clements whom I’d met on my first visit to Nashville that really got me started professionally. And I made many cherished friends early on, Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, even Hank Snow, a fellow Maritimer of yours, although he was quite reclusive even then, but we were both on RCA.

I asked him if he’d ever met Wilf Carter. “Once only, briefly, at a Fan Fair. He seemed to shun Nashville, but he was a legend.” That reply led me to an inevitable question: “You first appeared on the Grand Ole Opry just after your first single hit the charts in 1966 and were a frequent guest there after but you didn’t join their cast until the year 2000. Was there a reason?”

He laughed, “Well, I was invited to often but I’m afraid my choosing not to accept was for purely financial reasons. In those days you had to agree to appear at the Opry twice a month. That meant if you were on tour you had to allow travel time between concerts to get back to Nashville, an appearance that paid not enough to cover expenses and I had a family of my own and my parents and siblings to help out some, as well.

“Oh, the fame of being a full fledged Opry star and the spin offs from it, made it worth while for some but not for a tour oriented act such as I soon became.”

Charley from the start was an individual who set his own goals and, from his first taste of what recording fame could bring, was determined to become in every sense an international star.

Shortly after his first Number One Billboard chart hit he began touring the UK, Continental Europe, Australia, Japan, Fiji and Canada. He also quickly became a featured attraction on USO shows entertaining US service people in far off corners of the globe. Having served a tour of duty in the US military himself in the 1950’s this became a priority of his even though his career was quickly accelerating to hurricane momentum.

It has been written that among the glitter and loud percussion of today’s country music there are still, thankfully, ‘guys like Charley Pride’, the solid embodiment of the timelessness of music, among whose decades of material are some of the most comfortable sing-along tunes yet recorded.

“I think, however, that more than anyone or anything else in my life my mother’s advice and words of wisdom were what shaped me. Even as a child she would say to me “Charlie, whatever you become in life treat everyone with dignity.” She thought the world would could be such a more wonderful place  “if only everyone would do unto others as they’d have others do unto them”. When the song Comfort Of Her Wings came my way a couple of years ago I knew I just had to record it. It reminded me of the comfort the quiet sure strength of her belief always brought me.

“She ushered eleven of us into this world but died far too young, when only 48.”

“I was really concerned when I heard of your head injury last fall” I told him, “and the surgery. Were you able to attend Texas Rangers training camp this year after that?”

“Oh yes,” he laughed again, “got to stay in shape you know. After all if my music career hits the skids I need another job to fall back on!”:

This from a man who was second only to Elvis Presley in record sales on the RCA roster and whose incredible recorded legacy includes 36 Number One hits, over 70 million albums sold, 31 gold and four platinum albums including one that went quadruple platinum.

But his biggest hit he still says “was a double into the outfield gap off Baseball Hall of Famer Warren Spahn.”

As most fans know Charley’s first choice of a career was baseball, at which he also excelled, alternating as pitcher and outfielder for the Memphis Red Sox.

“They were a team in what they used to call the Negro American League. We didn’t get the money or perks of a National Baseball Leaguer but Jackie Robinson would soon break that sports colour bar.

“I returned to Memphis to pitch after my stint in the military and played outfield but quit after a wage dispute. I worked a number of labour jobs after that and ended up doing shifts at a zinc smelter in Montana, playing semi-pro ball in the Pioneer League on the side. The colour bar in the Majors came down and I was invited to try-out with the California Angels and a year later the New York Mets but didn’t make either line-up. The bar was down but opportunities for us were few prior to the League’s expansion.

I’d been playing guitar…I’d taught myself…and singing a lot on team buses between ballparks and I’d also filled in with various bar bands so I swung down to Nashville on my way back home after my Met tryout and was introduced to Jack Johnson who arranged a show appearance for me, liked what he heard, and promised me a management contract if I moved my family down. It was a relationship that lasted over a decade.

“The 1960’s and 70’s were exciting years in Nashville and a lot of great stars came into their own including another Maritimer I got to know and admired greatly, Ann Murray. She was a lady who seemed to have her feet planted firmly on what was good and traditional in music .

“And, now that spring training with the Texas Rangers is over, it’s touring time again?”

“Yes. And I’m really excited about visiting the Maritimes again,” he said. “ It’s been a long time, about 20 years, but I remember Fredericton and Saint John so well.

“ My golf game is suffering, though, I have to tell you, because I haven’t time to get out on the green much. We filmed a biography CMT special that aired a week ago and now it’s back to touring.

“By the way,  my opening act up your way is a wonderful young lady, Kylie Harris whom I met on a tour of New Zealand and whom I was instrumental in having appear on the Grand Ole Opry in 2001. I have great hopes for her.”

Sean Eyre, creative and promotions director for Rocklands Entertainment Inc. of Peterborough, Ontario, who manage the Charley Pride Canadian Tours, added strongly to this endorsement of Kylie.

“She’s a beautiful young singer,” Sean told me last Thursday, “and I recently saw her receive a standing ovation for an a capella performance of Danny Boy. Her voice is just phenomenal, you’ll love her. From what I understand there’ll be a full house in Saint John. Harbour Station’s sold 5300 tickets and has just put out another 600 seats, so tell your Telegraph-Journal readers to get their’s soon or be disappointed..”  WRITTEN IN 2005

LEFT: Gerry T., Charley, Rub Watters and Carol Taylor, laughing about his (Charley’s) pronunciation of Newfoundland words.

At RIGHT: Charley’s son Dion Pride, when he first appeared at Harbour Station…his first tour with his Dad. Lovely young man. Gerry was only writer to ask Charley who was opening for him and as a consequence, the Telegraph Journal was  the only paper who wrote about Dion. When we met him, he jumped up and gave Gerry a hug and said thank you.