Tonight I was in the kitchen putting together the chicken enchiladas for dinner and listening to "The Essential Charley Pride" on CD. I have been a fan of his for a long time. I even saw him in person once, a long time ago, before he became a superstar...he was just a rising star at the time. Here's how that came about.
It was the summer of 1968 in Mannheim, West Germany and we were deep into preparing our unit to return to the States. Stan, one of my friends at work, asked me if I had heard of Charley Pride. I remembered that he had a song on the radio called "Let the Chips Fall"; that was all I knew about him. Stan said that Charley Pride was going to be at the Worms NCO club that weekend and suggested we go to the show. So we did; we dressed up and made a date-night of it. MamaCharlie, nineteen and beautiful, looked great in her white dress (short and sleeveless) and I wore my suit. We got there early and secured a table right next to the dance floor; in fact I sat with my chair turned toward the stage and my feet were on the dance floor. A pretty good country band that had been making the circuit around NCO clubs for a while came out and got things warmed up. They stayed in place and backed Charley up when he came out.
It was, as I said, 1968. There was a lot of tension in the air all the time...Hawks and Doves, Blacks and Whites, Lifers and Short-timers, dopers and juicers; take your pick, there were lots of divisions to choose from but the Black and White issue was always the foremost. Charley Pride was black. But a lot of people didn't know that...for the first two years at RCA Records they never circulated any pictures of him...you know why. His voice is right out of Mississippi, rich and deep, and not a hint of ethnicity in it. And he made jokes about it all through his act.
It was a great show. He was (and still is) a great performer, sprinkling homespun stories in between the songs, and totally engaging the audience. "I know what you're thinking...he looks like one 'a them but he sounds like one 'a us", was his first crack. Then he said to the blacks in the room that if they were here because they saw his face on the poster and wanted to request some sweet soul music, they may as well leave now cause "country is all we got here tonight". After a couple more songs he talked about growing up in Mississippi and picking cotton as a kid and what that did to your hands. He told a little about how he came to be discovered and got a record deal. He went on about how his life had changed and ended it up with a cute face for the crowd and the pronouncement that he "ain't gonna be pickin' no cotton no more." He explained that some folks complained that the next song he would sing wasn't exactly right but, he said, "...I'm gonna do it the way I learned back when I was a little boy; some of the verses ain't right where they supposed to be but this is how I do it". Then he sang Hank Williams' "Kawliga" and brought the house down...yeah, one of the verses wasn't exactly right and he reversed the order of them...but so what?
There was one distraction during the show that irritated me no end. When Charley Pride was talking or singing and had his back to the band, the lead singer of the band would roll his eyes or make smirking looks or in other ways indicate displeasure...I read that to mean that he thought it was below him to play for a black star. My take on it; maybe I was too sensitive because of the moods in our unit, or maybe the guy just thought he was better than Charley Pride (he wasn't). But it was a distraction and sometimes Charley Pride's body language indicated that he was well-aware of the secondary show going on behind him.
After the show, many of the audience, including MamaCharlie and Stan's wife, lined up to get autographs. An indicator of how tuned into his audience he was, Charley spoke to each person as he signed their program or ticket or whatever they had and told them where they had been sitting in the audience. He told MC that she had been sitting next to the guy with all the legs hanging out on the dance floor.
I heard that there were some problems over black and white issues at the Worms club later that night and the next night, but I don't know if that really happened or was just a rumor. All I know for sure is that we had a wonderful evening and went home singing Charley Pride songs and have continued to be fans of his for the last forty-three years.
In the kitchen tonight I sang along and rolled them tortillas and once or twice I closed my eyes and could see Charley standing at the mike, gray suit and big smile...and MamaCharlie in that little white dress.