If you’re looking for an angle on why I sing country music, there ain’t one. I’m just an individual who sought to do what I do in spite of what people may say or think. | | | | Charley Pride performing on the ABC News series "Americans All" on Nov. 17, 1974.
(ABC Photo Archives/Getty Images) | | | | | | “If you’re looking for an angle on why I sing country music, there ain’t one. I’m just an individual who sought to do what I do in spite of what people may say or think.”
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| | rantnrave:// Three must-reads on CHARLEY PRIDE, one of the most underappreciated superstars of music's last half-century, who died Saturday of Covid-19. ZAC CRAIN's 2008 psychological profile for Pride's hometown D Magazine, on the occasion of his 70th birthday, is a long and winding read that tries to explain that underappreciation while tracing the life story of an unassuming but determined country singing great who always wanted to be known for his voice and his talent rather than for the biological fact that led his story, in one way or another, every time someone other than he told it. He felt an unusually strong need, therefore, to be his own storyteller. He wasn't the first Black country star but he was far and away the biggest, and for most of his career he was the only one. Though he ran into a few roadblocks over the years at record companies and on the road, he was never treated badly, he would almost always insist, and he never felt like an outsider. His records were big sellers, radio played them and the industry gave him its biggest awards. (And he always insisted on presenting his true self. Or, as another Texas writer put it, "Charley proudly wore an Afro, not a cowboy hat.") When anyone questioned whether he belonged, he responded not with good trouble but with good humor, which worked. It always worked. DAVID CANTWELL found some of that humor "cringe-y." Cantwell's 2019 New Yorker essay on Pride is a useful counterpoint that zeroes in on a couple occasions where the singer was treated, if not badly, than not exactly with respect. Cantwell's piece draws a line between those incidents and the very real rage Pride felt earlier in life, growing up in the Jim Crow South. At one point, Cantwell writes, quoting from Pride's 1994 memoir, "he dreamed of becoming a fighter pilot, flying over his home town, and 'strafing everything in sight.'" Cantwell sees Pride as an "enigmatic figure" who "never explains how he tamed the murderous, Jim Crow-born rage that he felt as a young man." Of course, it isn't the artist's job to explain. It's the artist's job to make art, wherein listeners can hear those underlying stories if they're there to be heard, as they usually are. And Pride, writes Cantwell, was "a great American artist." Pride wasn't a songwriter. He did his storytelling with his voice, not his pen, and his voice was a strong, versatile baritone that sometimes leaned into a country twang and other times softened into a classic pop croon. Must-read #3 is RJ SMITH's straightahead catalog for the LA Times of Pride's essential recordings, through which Smith makes the case for Pride's musical genius: "Few country singers blended hard and soft modes as deftly as Pride." It was a voice that "spares unnecessary editorializing; Pride lets the picture tell his tale." The pictures are rich and detailed, sometimes sad, sometimes overflowing with love, and sometimes, maybe at their best, both. If there was one story he really wanted to tell, it may have been this: He may have looked like an outsider, but he was really an insider all along. MusicSET: "Forget Everything Else About Charley Pride and Remember This: He WAS Country Music"... Pride was a gifted baseball player who pitched and played outfield in the Negro and minor leagues. JACKIE ROBINSON was an inspiration, and in later years he would swear he never faced any of the hatred on the country music circuit that Robinson faced in baseball stadiums around the country. Being cut by both the expansion LOS ANGELES ANGELS and the hapless NEW YORK METS convinced him to concentrate on his other love, singing... He died of Covid-19, and there was some angry chatter within the country community that his appearance at the CMA AWARDS, a month and a day before he died, may have been the source. He was presented with a lifetime achievement award and performed for what turned out to be the last time at a ceremony controversially staged as a live show, with a small, socially distanced audience and a parade of live, generally mask-free performances. The CMA said Saturday that Pride was tested for Covid multiple times before and after the show and all tests were negative. The association said it would have nothing more to say, and it's likely we'll ever know for sure where Pride caught the fatal disease. But if I were the CMA, I'd be losing a sleep right now over the idea of putting anyone in that situation—multiple people together onstage, some of them singing, masks treated as optional in the audience—never mind an 86-year-old man. And if I were any awards show of any kind scheduled for the next half year or so, I'd be thinking, and rethinking, long and hard... RIP also "BLUE" GENE TYRANNY, NOAH CRESHEVSKY, FRANK AMADEO, OTHELLA DALLAS, EDWARD "BUDDY" BANKS. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| He was often described as the Jackie Robinson of country music, though he always insisted he had it much easier than Robinson did. He wanted to be remembered for his music, which in a perfect world would be the easiest ask in that world. | | |
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| It was the worst year for live music in... well, ever. The Times spoke with two dozen musicians and live-music pros to assess the damage done by the pandemic. | | |
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| 2020* will forever have a huge, indelible asterisk beside it. It will serve as a stark reminder that the most challenging year our industry has ever endured was an anomaly, an aberration, a pox on our businesses, one that deviated widely from all norms and can’t be over fast enough. | | |
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| If the global pandemic had not occurred, triggering the shutdown of live performing, 2020 might have produced the first $12 billion year in Boxoffice earnings. But that was not to be. Boxoffice revenue for the Top 100 tours ultimately totaled $1.2 billion this year, a 78% plummet in worldwide grosses compared to 2019’s $5.5 billion. | | |
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| Back at the Harvard Crimson, Biden’s Secretary of State nominee, Antony Blinken, dreamed of being Lester Bangs. | | |
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| Despite the pandemic's impact on the worldwide recording industry, releases from South Korea saw no decline in quantity or quality. | | |
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| If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. But if you want to pass along your right of publicity to your heirs, go ahead and make it anywhere else. | | |
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| Historically all about pomp, flying saucers and gatefold sleeves, the concept record is being revitalised by artists as varied as The Avalanches and Gazelle Twin. It’s about finding new ways to connect, they tell Ed Power. | | |
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| The 22-year-old white rapper is best known for his massive hit “Whats Poppin” and that photo of Lou Williams in a strip club. But he wants you to know his new album Thats What They All Say is all about honesty and craft. | | |
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| Bay Area music venues are on the brink of shutting down permanently. Business owners and elected officials weigh in on how they can be saved. | | |
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| | | when i stop leaving (i'll be gone) |
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| Four Latinx contributors at The Times revisited the album, as well as their own memories of Selena. | | |
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| Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s horny hit was the undeniable smash of the year - but its success was about more than just nether regions. | | |
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| Top creative directors push to keep innovating their awards-show performances -- and hope the Grammys will follow suit. | | |
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| The Artist Rights Alliance says it is fighting for higher baseline royalties for musicians and more equitable rules of the digital road. | | |
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| The Bee Gees occupy a singular niche in pop history. A movie asks: How deep was their greatness? | | |
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| Music theory is bad at explaining pop because we're so focused on notes and chords that we miss out on what makes a great pop song so special. Can we do better? Sure! But how? Well, one possible approach would be to build some new models that actually incorporate pop production. | | |
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| If we say we care about the history of this music, we need to stop enabling the ones that screwed it up. | | |
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| Featuring Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Kosmo Vinyl, and the late Joe Strummer. | | |
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| We’ve collated our writers’ ‘best of’ lists and crunched the numbers to arrive at NME's 50 best albums of 2020. | | |
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| The ”Top 100” is no more. | | |
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| © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group |
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