(upbeat ambient music) - [Narrator] "A Word on Words," a program delving into the world of books and their authors.

This week, Charley Pride talks about "Pride: The Charley Pride Story."

Your host for "A Word on Words," Mr. John Siegenthaler, Chairman of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University.

- Hello, I am John Siegenthaler.

Welcome once again to "A Word on Words," and I'm now gonna show you the face of this week's author.

It's a face you'll recognize, the face of Charley Pride.

Welcome to "A Word on Words," Charley Pride.

- Thank you, John.

- Your book "Pride: The Charley Pride Story," just out.

It's a story about your life, it's gonna surprise an awful lot of people.

It surprise me, I found out more about you that I didn't know and I'm a fan of yours.

My guess is that 99% of the people who see that face will recognize it.

And they won't know unless they read the book that in the mid 1960s when you began to tour as a country music singer, that face was a problem.

There were many clubs and many stages where you didn't appear because promoters were afraid for that face to be seen by audiences.

- Well, there was some reluctance at the very beginning of my career by different promoters and different clubs that thought that it might be some adverse reaction once I was booked in their particular establishment, but they shouldn't have been worried because although each night was a test seemed like in every different club or town, but there never was any problems with anything, but I can understand why the reflective thing was there because of my career, I came along at the height of the civil rights movement in the city ends and et cetera.

But once I got on stage and started singing, all that kind of stuff dissolved.

- Their fear, I guess was that unrest in the country, we've never had since DeFord Bailey and who around today can remember DeFord Bailey, the great harmonica player?

We've never had a black country music star, they didn't know how country music audiences would react.

- Hmm.

- I think it was underestimation of the appreciation of country music, and of country music fans for talent.

- Well, I think so, and plus they underestimated the power of a person that all of my life, I've just wanted to be, I mean, that was an individual thing too, of just wanting to be myself in spite of all the early in my life, I'd already faced and experienced, what do you sing in their music and et cetera, et cetera.

But you see, I've always been an American in my own mind and in my own heart.

And that all came forth without even saying just by being myself.

I like to think that what happened in my career, I was let be myself, that not only just to sing country music, but in all aspects of my life, that's the way it's always have been.

- You came out of Mississippi.

- Hmm.

- One of 11 children.

- Right.

- Three other children were stillbirth and.

- Yeah.

- Maybe another was miscarriage.

- Yes, that's correct.

- Tough home life.

- Well, yeah.

- You tell about it I think with real feeling, your father was a hard man.

- Yes.

- You say you grew up and that he believed in punishment.

- Yeah.

- He believed in spanking his children.

- Right.

- But he's a good man.

- Yeah.

- And your mother was a wonderful woman.

Is the book dedicated to your mother?

- Yes.

The thing I feel bad about John is that I look in the book and I'm gonna check, I have a beautiful picture of my mother that should have been.

- Yes.

- Directly in the front page there, and I was talking to my wife about it and I said, you know, I was laying in bed.

I said something that I don't know how it got past me, but that beautiful picture that I have of my mother should have been right in the front page, I mean, it was dedicated to her too, where people could see what she looked like.

But a lot of times you do reprints and all right, I mean, re, when they do different press and they press so many in press.

- Sure, reproduction.

- And they go back.

- Well, there'll be another edition of the book.

- Edition, you know, so.

- I'm so sure.

- I think we'll make sure that happens next time.

- You know, when you say that there are people who have said, quote "you're singing their music," close quote, it makes it appear that you're being something other than yourself.

- Yeah.

- And when they say that, it might sound as if, well, you know, Charley Pride never struggled in this world and don't understand what it is to be a black person who's gone through the problems of those who suffered in those years.

I mean, those people haven't read this book, and I will tell you, anybody who reads this book is gonna get a view of Charley Pride and gonna understand that it has been not only a struggle to make it as a singer, but it's been a struggle to make it as a human being, because being black in Mississippi, when you were a child.

- Hmm.

- Was a hard life.

And you tell a story about two men coming to the front door.

- Mm-hmm.

- You and your brothers were out playing ball.

- Yeah, my brother I'm next to, yeah.

- Yeah, and Junior, they went after Junior.

- Yeah, they grabbed him and put him in the car, and they got.

- It was a minor kidnapping.

- Well, basically, really that's what it was.

When they got stuck about maybe it would be equivalent to about two, three blocks from the house, 'cause I had to run all the way and get mom and dad was pick, well not, they wasn't picking, they were pulling it you see, at that time, it was wet, the ground wet.

You tie the sack up to where it just hangs from your back and don't drag on the ground and just pull bowl and cotton all together.

I don't know how far I had to run, but it seemed like an eternity.

So I got there and closed the book, it's in the book.

I mean how I was breathing, trying to say, (Charley panting) I mean, trying to get it out and everything, and daddy shook me, "what are you trying to say?"

So mother say, "well, can't you see, he's outta breath?"

(Charley chuckles) (John laughs) So I finally get it out, and we get back to the house, and my brother is, when they got stuck, he opened the car door and jumped out and ran back to the house.

So daddy, you know, he was just in a rage, you know, he was gonna get the pistol and go and, and she talked him out of it, you know.

Not going down and doing anything.

- His view was that he might whip his children.

- That's right.

- But he didn't want anybody else.

- No, it wasn't want, he-- - And won't any white men gonna put their hands on his children.

- No, what color didn't make any difference, no one bothered his, he was like a, if you ever seen, grew up on the farm and if you watched a hen with a little bitties, the little chicks, little baby chicks, storm comes or lightning or something like that, danger, if you've never been on a farm, well, what happens is they take their wings and spread 'em out and they try to get everyone, those little bitties up on their wings.

So that's kind of the similar, that's the kind of description I like to take with my dad.

Yeah, he spanked the living daylights out of them, but nobody else was to touch us.

No one abused us.

- He went to the sheriff, the sheriff wouldn't do anything about it, but make a trip to Clarksdale.

- Hmm.

- Where these two men had come from and he warned everybody over there.

- See the thing is that, you know, I was little, but somehow what was said before they grabbed Junior, you see you have to understand, we had an uncle named Sam Scott, and they had some false teeth and they went brr, like that.

Which said, this is his teeth, you know, not scared, now you talk about scaring the daylights out of me, 'cause I'd never seen no false teeth, I thought when they-- - You thought they might have cut your uncle's teeth out.

- They went and cut his teeth out and they were rattling them.

I mean, you know when you're little.

- Sure.

- But the point you gotta understand too, is that looking back on it now that I'm a grown person, and so forth, these people had to be, and I think that's what it turned out, had to be someone that was acquainted with our family and everything else.

See, and plus again, that was some people that came to my dad and offered to buy either one of us, 'cause we could, the word was is that, they could get other kids and that they would take care of us if just sell one of us to them, and they would keep him as, we'd be their caretaker, the house, you know, they wouldn't have to work in the field.

So all most similar to something like.

- Back to slavery.

- Back to slavery type things.

But so I remember all those kinds of things, but see, the point is you'd have to understand is that even hearing all of this, I had a mother and father that was astute enough to tell their kids what the situation is and what they are and et cetera, but able to rise above that kind of point of where you might get bitter or something and end up one being a, you might say a militant or that kind of thing.

So, in that sense, my dad, so 50 years, some deacon in the Baptist church for many, many years, he's now, it's kind of hard, I just went to see him yesterday.

He's in a home right now, he has what you call, since the book's been written, he has the arteries that take the blood to the brain.

I mean, take the oxygen to the brain and all, he can look at you and he can in and out figure out who you are every, but not be able to sit and talk like we are on a one-on-one basis and keep focused on the conversation we are dealing with.

- You told him one time, I'm not gonna stay and pick cotton.

- Right.

- And you didn't stay and pick cotton.

- No.

- Jackie Robinson had made it.

- Yeah.

- And Charley Pride wanted to make it.

- Yeah.

- And he wanted to play baseball.

- Right.

- Now, I said that anybody who looks at you today and understands that you're not only a great singer, but that you're also affluent.

I mean, you got some dough, you got plenty of money and fly.

- Well that's-- - Well, I mean, you know, a guy who can save a bank by coming up with eight thousand bucks.

- You read-- - I read the book Charley.

(Both laughs) - Well.

- But I say that only to say this, you ate the roots of weeds.

- Yeah.

- You were so hungry.

- When I was playing baseball like, up in Iowa.

I went up to play in the Iowa State League and we were playing on a, what we call a percentage basis, and if you didn't play, you didn't get paid.

I mean, it was that simple.

And it seemed like it would be just beautiful like it is today.

I don't know when this will be aired, but this is a beautiful day outside.

- Sure it is.

- There is sunshine and it's what I call golf weather.

- Right, it do.

- But we shine and real pretty.

And by the way we were in, we ended up being stationed in Andy Williams hometown of Wall Lake, Iowa and-- - Playing ball.

- Yeah, we were an all black team in that league, in Iowa State League.

And the guy took over, I forget his name, but I think his name is in the book, Popcorn King, they call him.

- Yeah.

- But other than, until he did that, we had ran outta money 'cause we'd been up in Iowa for about a week or two, trying to get ready to play, get the games in where we could draw people and get the percentage money split down.

- And every day is a rain day?

- Well, it'd be pretty all day and the night, come it just rain cats.

(Both laughs) So finally he took the team over and what happened too of course, it was a blessing in a way in disguise.

On one hand, when I first, when I got started playing, I had tried out for the Memphis Red Sox and didn't quite make it because they had guys like Ollie Brantley, Marshall Bridges, which Marshall Bridges eventually went on to be with the Cincinnati Reds.

- Sure.

- And the Yankees.

And the guy, the manager went back, and raided the whole team 'cause we wasn't winning.

Once we got started and sent me packing.

Not just me, but a bunch of other players and picked on a couple three of us.

So I went straight back to Memphis, got me a job.

So after I got on the team, they couldn't shake me anymore in my lifetime 'cause I made the team, stayed there for, not forever but.

- Now you played in that Postseason All-Star team that won against the Willie Mays, the All-Stars, yeah.

- Willie Mays, and Maye Evan.

- Right.

- Hank Aaron, some of the great players.

- Right.

- And I read some of the clippings that are reproduced in the book.

I mean, they're real keepsakes, I mean.

- Yes, that's correct.

- And you tell that story of you were a pitcher and outfielder.

- Yeah.

- And there's that one game where you had 'em going one to nothing in the eighth.

- Yes.

- And you thought finally I'm gonna get 'em.

- Albany, Georgia.

(John laughs) - Yeah.

But we didn't get 'em that night, they beat me two to one.

- Two to one.

- But I did get a chance later on was in Victoria, Texas, four to two and relief for winning, just to shut up Paul.

I don't know whether they have-- - Yup, that's right, it's true.

- But I think they have that.

- And yeah, they do.

And there's another clip again there where you drove in, the three runs, won a ball game.

I mean.

- Yeah.

- Now you're a modest man, and when I talked about your success in monetary terms, you sort of deflected that a little bit, but the truth of the matter is you've been extremely successful and you managed your affairs very well.

And my guess is that your wife has done a marvelous job of that and-- - No doubt.

- And some of your investments are listed in the book, in the narrative of how you tell of your success, but which makes where you came from and the way you came up, all the more remarkable, I would think people who read that will see things about Charley Pride, they never imagined, as I said, coming out of a cotton town in Mississippi, eating weeds as a baseball player.

- Not Mississippi though, i was in Iowa.

- No, I understanding in Iowa and really going through tough times.

And then there is another aspect of it, and this aspect of the book, I think is gonna mean an awful lot to many people who probably aren't willing to admit what you admit in the book.

And that is that you've had bouts with depression and that you take a drug lithium recommended by the doctors to help you through that.

Can you talk a little bit about that, how it came on?

When you noticed it?

How bad it was?

- Well, first of all, I don't think managing depression is not that much, it's not something that's known as widely, known of as tuberculosis or something like it or some other disease.

- Sure.

This is something that slowly the doctors have just, you know, come up with.

They've had, you know, schizophrenia and all other kind of things, but this, I mean, but all these kind of things, I guess they border on, I mean depression and et cetera.

But I'd like to say when this first, my first bad episode happened was in Germany.

I was entertaining the troops and I was doing four shows a night.

I was doing like two shows at this barracks, then like from eight to 10, 11, then go from eight to 10, then from 10, we drive another 40, 50 miles and do 11 to 12, another two shows.

And of course, once you start, it's a combination of what I've experienced, it's a combination of losing sleep, exhaustion, so I thought what I had done is just overworked myself and I was run down.

You know, I had run my system down and that was it, you know, I just, it was complete exhaustion.

But so once I got back to the states, of course, they examined me.

They put me in the hospital, it was 1968 in Landsdew, and I think that's why they came up with that possibility, you know, I had never heard of it.

- Of depression.

- No, I mean.

- Yeah.

- De what?

I mean, I'm all right, you know.

But since though, I've noticed people, I think like Patty Duke, she gone through, they just found out, she from a little kid and growing up to be a grown woman.

She, I just think now looking back, what kind of hell she probably went through as a kid?

And of course I read some things on her where her mother, father just completely turned over to something like her producer and handler and that sort of thing.

But so that, I've only had about three bad episodes that were episodes where you might say, you tilt over the edge and don't understand where you are?

Or you think you see what you don't see and feel what you don't feel and et cetera.

So, 'cause the things, some of the things my wife and different ones have told me that I was doing and it was hard to believe that I did some of those things.

So in that sense, it is, I admit that I've been taking lithium now for about three years and I took one and one for about that time now.

And the last time I went back for, and I'm up for a, they monitor the blood, they have to monitor you and see how much in your blood level and all that sort of thing.

And so now I'm one in the morning, two at night.

'Cause the doctor was nothing, I wasn't showing any symptom of doing anything.

It's just that they like for your level to be a certain point level and so forth.

So now I've got to go since I've been on the one and two to see where that blood level is.

- You know, if I were getting ready to write a book about myself.

- Yeah.

- And I were Charley Pride, I'd probably take a pass on that story.

Even though I think it's a courageous thing you did, I'm not sure I'd have the guts to disclose that I had depression, was taking lithium, some people might say I was crazy, use the word crazy.

Some people might lose confidence in-- - Some people that, since I've found out about this, most people are the most creative, some of the most creative people in the world and-- - Who have it.

- Who have it.

- Yeah.

- And it seems to be that, it seems to help make 'em even more, if they're talented in whatever given area that they're in, whether they be businessman, whether they be artists or et cetera, there's a certain point to where, if you're in a certain state of mind, a certain state that you're not over here, gone over to the other side, what I'm saying, where it becomes not reality and so forth, that you are the most creative at that point.

And 'cause I remember looking back now, when I was even little, I wondered sometime, I guess, you know, you reflect back and said, maybe that was, you know, 'cause of, I guess it would've had to been there, more than just when it just don't jump in there overnight.

- Yeah.

- Say with all these many years and so forth and it just says, well, I think I'm gonna jump in and be a manage depression and so.

- Sure, well, no, I can understand that.

You know, the book talks about many things about you, about how you've steered clear of politics, about how you can look at so time, some people sometimes and spot their signs just by conversation with them.

It tells, as I said about your musical success.

Everybody wants to kiss an angel good morning since Charley Pride did it the first time.

I mean, you know, the first time I heard about, heard you singing about snakes, that's as close as I ever came to liking one.

(Both laughs) Hearing that first hit, but you know, there is another side of the story.

There is a word that comes up in the book again and again and again, and you don't like the word in the words Nigga.

And you've heard it from a lot of people.

I'm embarrassed to read some of the people who have used it.

But I thought that the most telling and compelling moment of the book was when your manager of that long period, who'd made a lot of money and done very well by you, used it one night sitting across the table.

And I said earlier, I thought you had courage for telling about your depression.

I think it took real courage to tell about that split with that manager who frankly, I didn't like very much after I read that little anecdote.

- Well, my theory and my philosophy is if I can't say something, if I'm not able to say something good about somebody, I don't say anything at all.

But again, my wife was responsible and Jim for the manic.

- For Jim Henderson?

- Jim Henderson.

- Your co-author.

- Yeah, my co-author.

And to get the manic depression chapter in and also to just tell exactly that particular part of it, but I wanna point out that Jack Johnson and Charley Pride was the best one, two combination, when we first got together.

He was drinking that night, you'll hear people say, well-- - When he made that cry?

- And he said, well, he said I was drinking this, but see, my wife's attitude was that, drinking, but didn't make him say it.

It was already there, just, it was an excuse.

- And that's what you told him?

It was there and it was just waiting to come out.

- Yeah, so, which I didn't disagree with.

The thing is that we've talked since, and he's asked me to forgive him and all that, and I have, in fact, they used him on my award.

They went and talked to him on the last award, I just got the last week at Academy of Country Music Awards.

And, but I wanna say that, we worked really good together until the break came.

Some people, say I didn't wanna break, and I don't like to fix something that ain't broke, we were doing all right, but I just thought there was some things need to be.

- Well, I mean, his share of the money was phenomenal.

- Well, and I felt that way, but then, but I'm a person like this.

I'm the kind of person, if you look at my record, it speaks for itself.

I've tried to help all the different artists that have been on the front of my show.

I've always been that way.

I used to, when I started out, there were a lot of guys, excuse me, that I've worked.

When I say guys, other artists that I would be working with at the beginning of my career, didn't want me to use their band.

Wasn't no color thing, nothing that was involved.

Their excuse mostly was that it would take away from them once they got out on stage, which once they gave me that excuse, I didn't, you know, if that's the way they felt, I took it as such, whether it was that way or not.

But then I thought about, well, one day, the more I thought about it for myself, when I get my band, every artist that opens my show is gonna sound the best that they can sound, and doing it, that's the way I did it.

You look back on it and you check all the ones that were there, that's the way it was.

And I'm glad of it.

So with that kind of thing, I'm glad that Jack and I parted, I'm not angry.

I feel sorry for anyone that wanna call me a name, or you a name or anyone a name, outside of a person, as a person being an American.

That's what, 'cause mostly that's what I live with, mostly American.

- Sure.

- So I meet first when I meet people, I meet 'em on the basis of that, they are another American that's talking to me.

Now, if they have hangups, what I call skin hangups, or color hangups, et cetera, et cetera.

Then I've always felt sorry for these people, and I still do.

So only thing, it hurt me to hear Jack sit there and do that, but I felt sorry for him for making that kind of statement because I never called him that, never will, and so I feel comfortable and as I said, we've talked and I've forgiven him, what he asked me to do, 'cause he asked me, "will you forgive me?"

He said, "forgive me before I go meet my maker," and that sort of thing.

I said, well, you're forgiven.

- Let me ask you about Jim Henderson, talking about collaboration.

- Oh, "Isabella."

- That's a good book.

How do you all work together?

- Well, what happened is that he used to work for, all right, for the Dallas Times Herald.

- Right.

- And when the Dallas Morning News bought the Times Herald, he then started to just be a freelance writer and everything and so they brought me some material on him of some of the things he had written and when I say they, my people and all, and I like some of the things that-- - Oh, he's a good writer.

- I saw he had written.

- I mean, Dallas produces a lot of good writers.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Jim Henderson is one of the best.

- Yeah.

So I said, okay, we'll get together.

So we got together and he took his tape recorder and we sat down and he started to ask questions and I answer 'em, just like we're sitting here really.

What happened?

And when you were here and when, and just the way it ended up.

So they take the transcript and break it all down, and at least he did.

And then we would sit together and make sure everything was as accurate as we could possibly come up with.

And because we wanted to try to get the book as close to the finishing product as possible before it went to William Morrow.

- Yeah.

- Which is the publisher.

- Sure.

- And so that's what we tried to do.

- Well, I congratulate both of you, you know, I know you love to play golf.

- Mm.

- And there's one funny story in this book about golf.

- Yeah.

- The Glazer Brothers.

- Yeah.

- So you with 'em out there and they took you, you said, "where are you going?"

First time you ever played golf.

- Right.

- Now, you'd been able not to hit a baseball.

- Yeah.

- Which was a moving pellet.

- Yeah.

- Now you're sitting out there with that little ball right there.

- Right, I mean, they said we were doing a tour up in Minnesota and they said, "we going to play golf."

I said, okay.

I said, I'd like to go.

They said "You got any clubs?"

I said, no, I don't have any club.

They said, "well, we got some, come on."

They I said, "you never played before?"

I said, no, but I play baseball.

And I mean, baseball coming at me a 90 some mile an hour, just, I mean, this little white ball sitting down on the tee telling me to hit it.

I said, I'm just gonna polarize it, you know what I mean?

And that's what I thought I was gonna do.

And so we get out there and they tee off.

I tee it up and I swing.

(golf club whooshing) - Strike one.

(John laughs) - It's still on the tee.

(John laughs) So I'd train the second time.

(golf club whooshing) It's still on the tee.

Now, honestly, I really don't understand why that ball is on the tee.

(John laughs) And, and I'm-- (upbeat ambient music) - [Narrator] Charley Pride, author of "Pride: The Charley Pride Story," has been our guest on "A Word on Words."

Your host has been John Seigenthaler, chairman of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University.

This program was produced in the studios of WDC in Nashville.

(upbeat ambient music)