Charley Pride Does Brook Benton

Did you know that country music great Charley Pride was such a fan of R&B crooner Brook Benton that he recorded an entire album of Benton’s greatest hits?

Well, we certainly didn’t know anything about that project until C&I recently received word that, nearly five years after Pride’s death, his long-lost Endlessly: A Tribute to Brook Benton would finally see the light of day, and reach the ears of fans.

According to the folks at Music City Records, the company that has released Endlessly, Pride recorded the tribute album to Benton, a singer he greatly respected, back in the 1980s. But for various reasons, those reels were never released, and eventually got buried in a storage room at Pride’s Dallas production office.  (Think of what happened to The Lost Ark after Indiana Jones located it, and you’ll get the idea.) In 2017, however, the reels were rediscovered, and in 2021, the tapes were carefully transferred to multi-track digital audio files.

“The reels just got lost in the shuffle,” says Greg Goslin, general manager of Music City Records. “That's the only way to explain it. I mean, it still boggles my mind that this is a project that ended up getting shelved at one point.

“But it was recorded between Charley’s RCA Records deal and his 16th Avenue Records deal, both of which were country music deals. This was kind of a passion project that Charlie did with his people. They did it in the middle, but it wasn’t something that they took to 16th Avenue in the late 1980s. So it kind of got shelved and put to the side, and then the masters got lost for a while. This is the only way that I can explain it.”

Pride had mentioned to Goslin on several occasions “that he had recorded the project and he was proud of it,” Goslin adds, “and he was trying find a CD copy of it around somewhere in his stuff so he could get it to me.

“But it wasn't until 2017 or so that we rediscovered the multi-track masters, and it took a while to go and get those baked and then digitized.” During the process, Pride died of COVID complications in 2020, “so that's why it’s just taken so long for the record to come to light.”

Endlessly “was cut here in Dallas in our studio,” recalls Rozene Pride, Charley’s widow, “to show you what good musicians we have here in Texas and in Dallas. Most  of his stuff was cut in Nashville because he was kind of a creature of habit. And his first records were cut in Nashville, so he kept that tradition. But he cut a few things here in Dallas, too, and this album was one of ’em. And the guy who produced it [the late Bob Pickering] was a Dallasite as well.”

Oddly enough, Charley never met Brook Benton, and Rozene has no idea whether Benton — who passed away at age 56 in 1988 — ever heard any cuts from Endlessly.

“Charley just loved his singing,” Rozene Pride says, “and he always said that, deep down, Benton was country.” After the success of Pride’s 1980 album There’s a Little Bit of Hank in Me, a tribute to Hank Williams, “he figured that since Benton was a good singer, and he liked his music and his songs, he should do tribute album for him, too.”

“The thing for me about this album is that there's no filler material. It's just pretty much wall to wall awesome.” — Greg Goslin, Music City Records

On the other hand, Pride’s countrified take on “Thank You, Pretty Baby” sounds just like something you would have found on any of Pride’s own ’80s albums. And when asked, Rozene Pride agrees that it could have been a hit single for him. Fittingly enough, it’s the first single from Endlessly to be released.

Other standouts on Endlessly include Pride’s versions of Benton’s “Think Twice,” “It’s Just a Matter of Time,” “Kiddio” — and, of course, the title track.

“Each one of the tracks has its special qualities,” Goslin says. “My tendency when I’m listening to albums is — and I think most people have the same experience — there’s maybe two or three tracks on the album that I like, and the rest is just filler material. The thing for me about this album is that there's no filler material. It's just pretty much wall to wall awesome.

“I'm still as amazed by the project as I was the first time I heard the rough mixes after we got this digitized. It's just like, wow, how is this something that ended up on a shelf for 35 years? It’s one of those things that just makes my mind explode.”