Disc 3: Forward With Pride

Pride was discovered in 1963 by country veterans Red Foley and Red Sovine, who encouraged him to go to Nashville. There he met songwriter-producer Jack Clement, who cut some demos and gave them to RCA executive Chet Atkins. Atkins signed the singer, billing him initially as “Country Charley Pride” and releasing his first single, “The Snakes Crawl at Night,” in 1966. A song of infidelity and murder, it established Pride as a straight-ahead country singer.

RCA had released “Snakes” without a publicity photo, but onstage Pride was forced to deal with white audiences unaccustomed to Black country singers. At his first big show, in Detroit in early 1967, he handled the situation gracefully while recognizing that the problem was not his, but his audience’s. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I realize it’s a little unique me coming out here on a country show wearing this permanent tan.” The quip became his standard icebreaker until his growing stardom made it unnecessary.

Between 1969 and 1983, Pride charted twenty-nine #1 singles, captured the CMA’s Male Vocalist of the Year award in 1971 and again in 1972, and won the CMA Entertainer of the Year award in 1971. He also won three Grammys, including Best Country Vocal Performance, Male, in 1972. This set includes two of Pride’s #1 recordings: “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone” (1970) and “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’” (1971), the latter of which, a million-selling single, also crossed over to #21 on the pop charts during 1971–1972.

In 2000, Pride became the first African American to earn induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He died in 2020 at age eighty-six.

Linda Martell

A native of Lexington County, South Carolina, Linda Martell was born Thelma Bynem in 1941 and raised around Leesville. “I also grew up singing country,” Martell emphasized. “My father, Clarence Bynem, loved country music. My three brothers were all musicians. We started out doing gospel at St. Mark Baptist Church in Leesville.” While still a teenager, she began singing in a racially integrated R&B group called the Anglos, with whom she recorded singles on the Fire and Vee-Jay labels. She also sang backup at recording sessions in Atlanta and Muscle Shoals.

In 1969, Plantation Records executive Shelby Singleton met and auditioned Martell. Within the span of seventy-two hours, Martell signed a contract, cut her first session, and saw the release of her first record on the label, “Color Him Father,” a country version of the Winstons’ soul hit. That same year, she became the first Black female country singer to appear on the Grand Ole Opry. Two more country singles and an album followed, along with more Opry spots, TV appearances, and tours. “I stopped recording country music in 1974,” explained Martell in a late 1990s interview, “but I didn’t stop singing it, as of yet. I now do a variety of music, including gospel, performing in clubs and halls mainly in South Carolina.”

Otis Williams & the Midnight Cowboys

Otis Williams (born 1936) is well known to longtime pop and R&B fans for such 1950s hits as “Hearts of Stone,” “Ling, Ting, Tong,” and “Ivory Tower,” recorded for DeLuxe. Williams and his vocal group, the Charms, served as the house group for King and associated labels, covering others’ hits while making some of their own. While at King, Williams wanted to record country music, too, and sang harmony on some of King’s country discs.

After the Charms broke up, Williams recorded for Epic, including a cover of Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces.” By the early 1970s, he was recording for the Nashville-based independent Stop label, choosing selections by Tom T. Hall, Kris Kristofferson, and Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. This set features Williams’s performance of Hall’s “How I Got to Memphis,” a #3 country hit for Bobby Bare in 1970.

La Melle Prince

One of the most intriguing and mysterious performers included in this collection, La Melle Prince was born Melverine Prince in 1927, in Kennett, Missouri, and grew up mainly in Flint, Michigan. She started singing professionally at age seventeen and reportedly toured for a brief time with the jazz band of Lionel Hampton. When she was twenty-two years old, Prince moved to Los Angeles, then to Las Vegas, and finally to Nashville. Though her love of country music was longstanding, it is unclear what ultimately brought her to Music City. Her producer, Decca executive Owen Bradley, recalled that Marty Robbins introduced him to Prince. “We tried to do the same thing with La Melle as with [RCA’s] Charley Pride,” Bradley explained. In 1969, Prince recorded four sides for Decca, including “The Man That Made a Woman Out of Me,” featured here.

With Robbins’s help, Prince also landed work performing overseas, but her country career was derailed in 1972 when her son died in a bicycle accident. Devastated, Prince turned to religion and thereafter sang gospel primarily. According to her nephew A. David Burleigh, Prince suffered a mental breakdown in 1975 and spent the remainder of the decade at Camarillo State Hospital in Southern California. It is believed, he reports, that Prince died in 1991.

Stoney Edwards

During the 1970s, Frenchy “Stoney” Edwards ranked second only to Charley Pride in popularity as a Black country music singer. Born in Seminole, Oklahoma, Edwards (1929–1997) grew up during the Great Depression. He never attended school and said that his mixed heritage (African American, Irish, and Native American) made him a perennial outsider. He taught himself to play guitar, began dabbling in songwriting, and gained exposure to country music through the music of western swing bandleader Bob Wills and Grand Old Opry broadcasts, along with stringband music played by his uncles, whom he helped run a bootlegging operation.

Early in the 1950s, Edwards moved to California and worked, variously, as a janitor, truck driver, cowboy, machinist, and shipyard crane operator. In 1970, after suffering severe health problems caused by a workplace accident, he appeared at a benefit he helped organize for the ailing Bob Wills, and his appearance there led to his discovery by Capitol Records. Five albums and a dozen chart singles ensued, including “She’s My Rock” (later a #1 for George Jones) and “Hank and Lefty Raised My Country Soul,” a tribute to country greats Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell. This set also contains the beautiful “Pickin’ Wildflowers,” a B-side cut that showcases Edwards’s artistry as a writer as well as a singer

O.B. McClinton

Born on a farm near Senatobia, Mississippi, Obie Burnett McClinton (1940–1987) grew up picking cotton. Early on, he listened to the Grand Ole Opry as well as to blues records broadcast over Nashville’s WLAC and rockabilly discs played by disc jockey Dewey Phillips on WHBQ in Memphis.

In the 1960s, McClinton turned his talent to soul music, writing “Keep Your Arms Around Me” for Otis Redding, and both “You’ve Got My Mind Messed Up” and “A Man Needs a Woman” for James Carr. He also recorded for the Beale Street and Goldwax labels and worked clubs around Memphis. Then, in 1971, McClinton signed as a country act with Memphis-based Stax Records, which put him on the affiliated Enterprise label. No releases from his first album, O. B. McClinton: Country, charted, but he convinced Stax to allow him to co-produce his second LP, Obie from Senatobie, with engineer Tommy Strong. That album yielded “Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You,” formerly a Top Twenty pop hit for soul singer Wilson Pickett and the best-selling single of McClinton’s career. Two more Enterprise albums followed, but by the time of his last Enterprise singles in 1975, Stax was in legal trouble and McClinton slipped through the cracks. Later, he recorded for Mercury, ABC, and Epic, among other labels.

Jo Ann Sweeney

Nashville native Eugenia “Jo Ann” Sweeney (1954–2022) was raised one block from Jefferson Street, the city’s primary Black entertainment district. Her father, Jimmy Sweeney, fronted 1940s and ’50s R&B vocal groups, wrote songs for Nashville music publishing house Acuff-Rose, and made solo recordings for its label, Hickory Records.

Jo Ann Sweeney excelled at piano, violin, and musical theater in her youth. In 1972, the year she graduated high school, she signed with an independent production company on Music Row co-founded by Eddie Miller, who years earlier co-wrote the classic song “Release Me.” Miller persuaded Sweeney to record country music for MGM Records. She enjoyed country music but preferred other styles—especially Motown—and was concerned about how much headway she could make in country music due to her race.

Sweeney released three 45-rpm records on MGM in late 1972 and ’73. “I’ll Take It,” her first single, was written by Miller and arranged by revered Nashville session guitarist Fred Carter Jr. It was the only one of her recordings to receive full-page, paid advertisements in trade publications such as Billboard and Cashbox. Working again with Miller and Carter, she released her fourth and final single, in 1974, this time on the tiny Nuggett label. Sweeney soon walked away from her career as a country recording artist and later achieved some success singing advertisement jingles and working as a session violinist and background vocalist.

The Pointer Sisters

When most people think of the Pointer Sisters, they usually recall the act’s million-selling singles, such as “He’s So Shy” and “Slow Hand.” Yet the Pointers have recorded many styles of music, including country. In fact, they received a 1974 Grammy for Best Country Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group for “Fairytale,” recorded with Nashville session players and included in this set.

Born in Oakland, California, the daughters of two Church of God ministers, Ruth (born 1946), Anita (1948–2022), Bonnie (1950–2020), and June Pointer (1953–2006) grew up singing in church. In 1969, Bonnie and June began performing in San Francisco clubs. Anita later joined them, and they soon found work as background vocalists for producer David Rubinson on sessions with acts such as Elvin Bishop, Cold Blood, and Tower of Power.

Early in the 1970s, Ruth joined the act, which signed with Blue Thumb Records and recorded an eclectic repertoire, ranging from the funky R&B hit “How Long (Betcha Got a Chick on the Side)” to “Fairytale,” a composition penned by Anita and Bonnie that helped the group win an Opry guest appearance as well as their country Grammy. In 1978, the Pointers began to chart on Planet Records, and among their hits was “Slow Hand” (1981), later a #1 country hit for Conway Twitty. After Planet’s demise, the sisters signed, in succession, with RCA, MCA, Motown, and SBK/ERG. They also participated in the 1994 Rhythm, Country and Blues project, collaborating with Clint Black on “Chain of Fools.” With the deaths of her younger sisters, Ruth Pointer remains the only surviving original member of the group and continues performing under the name the Pointer Sisters with her daughter and granddaughter.

Ruby Falls

Born Bertha Dorsey, Ruby Falls (1946–1986) was raised in the Jackson, Tennessee, area and picked cotton as a child. In her teens, she turned professional after moving to Milwaukee, where she appeared with various local bands and toured. Onstage, she relied upon a mixture of country, pop, and rock material.

In 1974, Falls moved to Nashville. “It made sense,” she explained at the time. “There’s a lot of country girl left in me, and I guess it shows in my music like it does in my talking.” For a time, she toured with country singer Justin Tubb and found acceptance in Las Vegas showrooms, as well as on Nashville-produced TV programs like That Good Ole Nashville Music. During the late 1970s, Falls made numerous recordings for the independent 50 States label. Among them was the honky-tonker “Show Me Where,” heard here.

Lenora Ross

In 1975, Lenora Ross was briefly touted in the music press as a female Charley Pride. Her warm soprano voice, with a Kitty Wells–like vibrato, was well-suited to country music. She grew up in the Cumminsville community on the north side of Cincinnati. Her parents, both from the South, were country music fans.

“My father—country music is all he would listen to on the radio—Lester Flatt, Roy Acuff, Hank Snow. And my mother was an avid fan of Kitty Wells,” Ross told The Tennessean. After high school, she sang with a jazz band in Europe before returning to Cincinnati in 1968. There she played nightclubs and made TV appearances on Cincinnati’s country barn dance, the Midwestern Hayride, and on the noontime Nick Clooney Show.

In 1971, Ross competed to be the “Champagne Lady”—the featured lead singer for Lawrence Welk’s orchestra and TV show. Though she failed to gain that spot, Welk noticed the petite (4’ 11”) singer and invited her to perform on two episodes of his program in 1971.

In 1974–1975, she released two country singles on RCA Records, both produced in Nashville by Bob Ferguson. The second single, “Lonely Together,” featured here, was written by Country Music Hall of Famer Bill Anderson. With its frisky western swing touches, Anderson’s dependable writing, and Ross’s vocal command, it could have been a hit. But neither RCA single made the charts. The last known recording by Ross was “Early in the Morning,” a single on the independent LCA label that did not chart.

Professor Longhair

Bogalusa, Louisiana, native Professor Longhair, who was born Henry Roeland “Roy” Byrd (1918–1980), developed an inventive, influential piano style that mixed blues, boogie-woogie, jazz, and Latin ingredients. Settling in New Orleans with his mother after his parents separated, he was dancing in the streets for tips by age ten and soon learned to play the piano by watching local players.

After wartime military service, Byrd became a featured act at the Caldonia Club, whose owner gave him his stage name because he obviously hadn’t visited a barber in some time. Although his recordings such as “Mardi Gras in New Orleans” and “Tipitina” have since come to define New Orleans R&B, he enjoyed little chart success or radio airplay beyond the Gulf Coast region at the time.

A stroke and a marijuana arrest hampered his career, but Professor Longhair was rediscovered in the 1970s through appearances at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and brilliant new recordings. He also found permanent work at Tipitina’s nightclub, which his fans dedicated to him. Included here is Professor Longhair’s rhythmic interpretation of “Jambalaya,” a #1 country hit for Hank Williams in 1952. Recorded in 1974, Professor Longhair’s version features the fiddle work of Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, a musician also well known for his command of R&B, jazz, and country styles.

Dobie Gray

Born Lawrence Darrow Brown in Simonton, Texas, Dobie Gray (1940–2011) was one of eight children in a sharecropping family. “I was raised by an aunt and uncle,” he recalled. “I was brought up on a combination of gospel and country music. Some blues, but we weren’t allowed to listen to the blues because it was unholy. When I could sneak it, I listened to Muddy Waters.”

Gray finished high school in Los Angeles, then secured recording contracts there with help from producer Sonny Bono, of Sonny & Cher fame. “The In Crowd” (Charger, 1958) became Gray’s first major success, and two years later, he joined the L.A. production of the musical Hair. Next came a stint with the rock group Pollution, a #5 pop hit on Decca in 1973 with “Drift Away,” and soul and gospel records for Capricorn, Infinity, Word/Myrrh, and Arista.

Later in the 1970s, Gray relocated to Nashville and began working country shows and writing songs for country artists such as Tammy Wynette, Conway Twitty, Razzy Bailey, and John Conlee. A special moment Gray recalled was the Grand Ole Opry appearance he made on the night of March 15, 1974, the last Opry program held at the Ryman Auditorium before the show moved to Opryland. A 1986 Capitol album, which took its title from the track “From Where I Stand,” won acclaim from country music critics.

Gray went on to sing several national radio and TV commercials for clients, including Chevrolet, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser. He made occasional stage and TV appearances, but preferred to concentrate on his songwriting.

Cleve Francis

The life of Dr. Cleveland Francis Jr. (born 1945)—a Jennings, Louisiana, native who is not only a country recording artist but also a practicing cardiologist—reads like a classic American success story. Although his mother and father sharecropped and held menial jobs, Francis and his brothers and sisters all went on to become college graduates and professionals. In Cleve’s case, he received his medical degree from the Medical College of Virginia in 1973.

As a boy, Francis made do with a guitar fashioned from a cigar box and window screen wire until his mother bought him a Sears, Roebuck Silvertone model. Strongly influenced by gospel music, he sang and played in church. While pursuing his education, he also worked gigs during summer vacations.

Through one of his patients, Francis connected with Playback Records of Miami, which released an unsuccessful album of his. But the video for “Love Light” received heavy airplay on CMT (Country Music Television) in 1990 and caught the attention of Nashville label executive Jimmy Bowen, who signed Francis. “Love Light” was re-recorded and became the debut single from Francis’s first Liberty Records album, Tourist in Paradise (1991), which also produced his highest-charting single, “You Do My Heart Good,” which reached #47 on the country charts. Francis recorded two more albums for Liberty before resuming his medical practice. He continues to tour occasionally and release records, including the 2022 Forager album, Beyond the Willow Tree, a reissue of his 1970 self-released folk-oriented LP, Follow Me.

Aaron Neville

A member of a renowned New Orleans musical family, Aaron Neville (born 1941) ranks among the most famous singers ever to emerge from that most musical of American cities. Along with his brothers Cyril, Charles, and Art, Aaron sang in a rhythm & blues group called the Hawkettes during the 1950s.

During the 1960s, Neville recorded off and on for numerous small labels, including Par-Lo, which released his memorable 1966 song, “Tell It Like It Is,” which became a #1 R&B and #2 pop hit. But because of a poorly drawn contract and the Par-Lo label’s financial collapse, he received no royalties and was forced to support his family by working as a longshoreman, truck driver, and house painter.

In 1978, the Neville Brothers reunited and, in 1981, their first LP for A&M Records, Fiyo on the Bayou, garnered wide critical acclaim, and as the decade progressed, the Nevilles’ fame and popularity soared. They toured widely and continued to record critically heralded albums. In 1989, Aaron and duet partner Linda Ronstadt scored a smash hit with “Don’t Know Much,” which paved the way for further duets, including a 1994 pairing with country star Trisha Yearwood on the Patsy Cline standard “I Fall to Pieces” for the Rhythm, Country and Blues album. On this set, Neville is represented by his 1993 solo recording of the George Jones classic “The Grand Tour.”

Barrence Whitfield

Born in 1955 in Jacksonville, Florida, Barrence Whitfield grew up in East Orange and Newark, New Jersey. In 1977, he moved to Boston to pursue a college degree in communications, but lack of funds forced him to quit. In 1983, he joined forces with white rock musician Peter Greenberg to form the Savages, who featured a rough, edgy, frenetic brand of R&B, as embodied in several albums that helped Whitfield develop a modest following on the East Coast and a considerable European audience as well.

Early in the 1990s, Whitfield teamed with singer-songwriter Tom Russell for two roots-oriented albums, Hillbilly Voodoo and Cowboy Mambo. These included songs by country singer-songwriter Billy Joe Shaver and “Desert Blues,” written by country music pioneer Jimmie Rodgers. For a decade, Whitfield had also been listening to country greats like Hank Williams, Ray Price, and George Jones and, thus, was well prepared when HighTone Records artist Dave Alvin, prompted by Tom Russell, asked Whitfield to record “Irma Jackson” for HighTone’s 1994 tribute to Merle Haggard, Tulare Dust. This Haggard composition about interracial love enabled Whitfield to display his versatility, an effort he continued with soul, R&B, rockabilly, and country numbers recorded for his album Ritual of the Savages (Ocean, 1995). In 2013, Whitfield signed with Bloodshot Records, which over the next five years released three of his albums.

Ted Hawkins

Success was long in coming to singer-songwriter Ted Hawkins, who was born into poverty in Lakeshore, Mississippi, in 1936. Deserted by his father and neglected by his mother, young Hawkins ran wild and was sent to reform school at age twelve and to prison at fifteen. After his release, he lived in the East for many years, but two divorces and cold weather prompted him to settle in California. There he pursued music in earnest, mostly working as a street singer in Los Angeles and Venice Beach.

Though financial success eluded him, Hawkins marked several career milestones over the next quarter-century, including releases on Rounder and on England’s Hot Shot and P. T. labels. In 1986, he left L.A. for England, his base for U.K. and European performances through 1990. Then, he resumed street-singing in Los Angeles and, later, Santa Monica.

In 1994, Hawkins released the album The Next Hundred Years on DGC Records. The collection showcased Hawkins’s stylistic mixture of soul, blues, gospel, and country; his distinctive, powerful vocals; and his obvious songwriting gifts. Included is the remarkable performance, featured here, of “There Stands the Glass,” a #1 hit for honky-tonk king Webb Pierce in 1953–1954. Sadly, Hawkins died in 1995, just as he was beginning to enjoy the fruits of his success.

Herb Jeffries

Born Umberto Alexander Valentino, Herb Jeffries (1916–2014) grew up in Detroit and began singing professionally there in his teens. Early in the 1930s, he moved to Chicago and soon attracted the attention of Earl “Fatha” Hines, who took him on the road with his jazz band.

While on tour with Hines, Jeffries witnessed a poignant scene involving a Black boy who was upset because his white playmates excluded him from their game of cowboys, supposedly because they believed cowboys had to be white. Jeffries comforted the lad, explaining that African Americans were indeed part of the cowboy tradition. The incident prompted Jeffries to create a heroic cowboy figure for the silver screen and to become the nation’s first and only Black singing cowboy movie star, beginning with Harlem on the Prairie (Associated Features, 1938) and continuing with four more films. Jeffries subsequently performed and recorded with the Duke Ellington Orchestra and other acts, sang in clubs (including one he operated in Paris in the 1950s), entertained U.S. military personnel at home and abroad, and acted onstage and on television.

Jeffries’s exuberant and jazz-influenced performance of “I’m a Happy Cowboy,” his self-penned movie theme song, was recorded for his 1995 Warner Western album, The Bronze Buckaroo Rides Again.