Can a white man sing the blues? Can a black man sing country? Unsurprisingly, there has been a particularly low-key presence of African-Americans on Nashville's acclaimed Music Row, an area that serves as the unofficial capital of the country music establishment. Indeed, African-Americans are notable by their absence in mainstream country music.
Yes, you can point out that the first popular black act in country music was Deford Bailey, a harmonica player who claimed he was cast aside by Nashville in the 1940s for racial reasons. You can tick off several soul acts such as Joe Simon, Bobby Bland and Joe Tex, who recorded in Nashville in the 1960s. You can say with certainty that Ray Charles stunned the pop world in the 1960s when he released a couple of country and western albums that topped the charts.
And you can state with equal assuredness that Al Green, Fats Domino and Solomon Burke each covered pure country songs. But a bona fide black country music star, as opposed to a creative interloper? Say hello, then, to 62-year-old Charley Pride, a man with more than 50 Top 10 hits to his name (and who never wrote one of them) yet someone who nevertheless questions the current state of the recording industry.
"I don't have a recording contract," says Charley Pride early in the conversation, not so much eager to moan as to state things as they are. "I don't get the rotation I got at the beginning of my career. For someone with such a large track record of hits, that's changed a lot from my early days, as well as the business change to people of my vintage. But nothing has changed in terms of my personal appearances and performances. They have done nothing but got better."
Born on a cotton farm in Sledge, Mississippi, one of 11 children raised by poor tenant farmer parents, Pride's interest in country music reflected the fact that in parts of the South, audiences for country music and blues crossed racial lines. Like many other black families in rural Mississippi, a daily wage for the Pride household was made by picking cotton, for which they were paid three dollars for every hundred pounds in weight. Liking what he heard on country radio (and, to a lesser degree, influenced by blues, gospel music and big bands) Pride broke with stereotypes by emulating the likes of the four Hanks - Cochran, Snow, Thompson and Williams. "I bought me a Sears Roebuck guitar and just started singing country songs," he says. "That's just where I ended up."
Initially side-tracked by a passion for baseball (he tried out for the California Angels and New York Mets, as well as playing semi-pro in the Pioneer League), former US soldier Pride - who sang in local bars at night while working off-season as a smelter - was chanced upon by a honkytonk singer, Red Sovine, in the early 1960s. Sovine, best known for his three-hanky sentimental recitation material, encouraged Pride to visit Nashville to audition for RCA. This he duly did, meeting up with the famed country producer Chet Atkins, who promptly signed him. It was the start of a career that, creatively, turned out to be somewhat of a rollercoaster; because he never wrote any of the material he performed, Pride suffered from extensive bouts of faulty quality control. That aside, his voice is regarded as one of the silkiest in the history of country music.
"When I started in the business, record labels worked for the artist, not only in terms of trying to sell records, but in trying to build and make the artist, too. They were selling both, which is not being done today. For example, the George Jones song, Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes? is about how the likes of Ernest Tubb, Eddie Arnold, Johnny Cash, myself, Glen Campbell, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynne and Conway Twitty have all more or less disappeared. Now, you have Garth Brooks. After him you've got bits and pieces.
"Of course, Garth is not a true country guy. Nothing against him, but Garth majored in marketing. He marketed himself to where he is now. He's sitting out there by himself in terms of success, but people like George Strait and Alan Jackson are still carrying the country music tradition. Similarly myself and George Jones - we're traditionalists. That was the difference."
But there was another difference - the colour of Charley Pride's skin. In the early stages of his RCA career, it was mooted that there should be no publicity photos taken of the new signing lest they alienate a potential audience. Charley says he understood the racial/cultural aspects of such a move, but reckoned his trump card was his performance and the songs.
"I always played country music from when I was small," he points out. "Sure, I got laughed at and made fun of, and what-chasing-there-boy kinda questions. But I've always been a total individual. I think the reason I had no problem with the coloured question - which I didn't - was by starting so young and being so good at what I did that having a bigger, deeper tan than the rest of the country singers around was the only difference. That's the way it's been throughout my career. After the shock of my colour wore off, people just didn't care. I could have been green for all they cared. Once I sung the songs, it was OK."
Did he not receive any prejudicial remarks or comments, especially in the early days? "No. I tell reporters that I have never had one iota of things like that. When I say this I get a disbelieving look from them. They think I'm lying. So I tell the reporters this: in 1971 I was voted Male Vocalist of the Year and Entertainer of the Year, and repeated in 1972 for Male Vocalist again. On the RCA label, I'm second only to Elvis Presley for selling the most records. I have three Grammies, 14 gold records in America, 35 worldwide. By this time, the reporters are slack-jawed. So I finish them off by saying that if I had been called the N-word - and I think you know what I mean by that - every inch of my career, then whichever way you cut it I'm a success when I give you those figures. That's the way I see it, anyway."
Was he surprised, then, that he was so readily accepted by an audience, parts of which were at worst, bigoted, at best, conservative? The answer is once more a firm "no". "I am what I am. If I had been a phoney, it would have been different. That's the only explanation I can give as to why I was so readily accepted. I believe that what an audience saw in me was honesty and integrity."
Honesty and integrity - and pride, too. The cotton-picking rented land that Charley walked away from, at the age of 16, in pursuit of fame and fortune, was purchased by him many years later. "I didn't do it to brag about it," says Pride. "The guy that owned the land was coloured, too, but he had it mortgaged up to the hilt. Other people who were trying to get it wouldn't give him the price he was looking for. I gave him better than top dollar for it, so I felt good about that. I'm glad I was able to give him more than other people would have given him."
Charley Pride doesn't say what colour the other people were, and I decide not to ask him. It seems unnecessary.
Charley Pride commences his Irish tour today at the Gleneagle Hotel, Killarney. He plays Leisureland, Galway, tomorrow, the Traveller's Friend, Castlebar on Sunday, and Vicar Street, Dublin next Tuesday. Check local press for further dates in Ireland throughout March, or concert website www.aikenpromotions.ie
