Brook Benton Tribute Album Releases September 19th
The world lost renown country music artist Charley Pride in December 2020, leaving behind an extraordinary legacy full to bursting with a mass of honors and awards, a 40-count trail of #1 hit songs, and tens of millions in record sales. His decades long career in music is a success story no one saw coming until Pride walked away from his stint as a semi-pro baseball player in the Negro league in the late 50’s and walked into a league all his own in the country music world. His smooth, warm baritone vocals immediately endeared him to country music fans worldwide and remains one of the most recognized voices today. In 2017 that familiar voice was rediscovered when a couple of forgotten reels were found buried deep in a storage room in Pride’s production office in Dallas, Texas. After his death, it was confirmed that the multi-track reels contained the long-lost Brook Benton tribute recordings Pride recorded in the 80’s but never released. In 2021 the tapes were carefully transferred to multi-track digital audio files, and Endlessly: a Tribute to Brook Benton will now be released on September 19th on Music City Records. This marks the 94th anniversary of Brook Benton’s birth. The album’s first single “Thank You Pretty Baby” will be released on Friday, August 29th on all digital music platforms.
Brimming with vintage country, rhythm & blues (R & B) and pop music sounds, this retro-sonic homage to legendary singer/songwriter Brook Benton clearly demonstrates that Pride’s versatility as an artist extended well beyond the confines of country music. Originally recorded in Pride’s adopted home of Dallas, Texas during a brief mid-1980s interlude between his RCA Records and 16th Avenue Records recording contracts, this previously unreleased album displays Pride flexing newfound artistic freedom on productions that sound notably different than his 1970s/1980s country music output. Produced and engineered by Bob Pickering, chief engineer at Pride’s home studio CECCA Sound,Endlessly features a genuine string section, and an impressive array of world-class musicians who proudly called North Texas home during the mid-1980s, including legendary bassist Chuck Rainey (Steely Dan, Aretha Franklin, Quincy Jones), drummer/percussionist Gene Glover (Ricardo Arjona), jazz pianist Fred Crane (Al Belletto, Johnnie Mercer, Al Hirt, Doc Severinsen), guitarist Jerry Matheny (LeAnn Rimes) and Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame inductee Billy Briggs Jr. (Bob Wills) on sax. The rest of the session players backing Pride were all handpicked, seasoned North Texas studio professionals with breathtaking resumes.
The songs that Pride chose to record for this tribute album were mostly derived from Brook’s initial 1959 to 1961 flurry of hits. “It’s Just a Matter of Time,” “Endlessly,” “Thank You Pretty Baby,” “So Close,” “So Many Ways” and “Kiddio” were all Top 5 R & B smashes that also crossed over to become significant Top 40 pop chart hits. More than just an outstanding homage to Brook Benton, this lavish, timeless sounding album is a potent testament to both Pride’s versatility as a music artist and the exceptional abilities of the world-class North Texas studio talents that backed him. Perhaps in time this long-lost treasure will earn the respect and acclaim necessary to elevate it into the upper echelon of Pride’s already extraordinary body of work.
About Brook Benton
An incredibly versatile singer, gifted songwriter and superb entertainer with little interest in being pigeonholed into a particular genre, Brook Benton exploded on the pop music scene in 1959 with “It’s Just a Matter of Time” and then notched an enviable string of thirty (30) Top-40 R&B hits, including several major pop crossover hits and Top-10 pop duets with Dinah Washington. Following a mid-to-late 1960s drought of major hit singles while recording for the RCA Records and Reprise Records labels, Brook signed with Cotillion Records, a new subsidiary label of Atlantic Records, where his comeback during the early 1970s netted five (5) additional Top-40 R&B hits, including the massive Top-5 pop crossover success of “Rainy Night in Georgia.”
About Charley Pride
A true music legend and trailblazer, Charley Pride enjoyed one of the most successful careers in the history of country music and helped to break color barriers when he became the first black superstar within the genre. An inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame (2000) and proud member of the Grand Ole Opry, Pride toured regularly on an international basis with an extraordinary repertoire of hits. A three-time GRAMMY® Award winner and 2017 GRAMMY® “Lifetime Achievement Award” recipient, Pride garnered no less than forty-three (43) chart-topping US country hits, including “All I Have To Offer You Is Me,” “Is Anybody Goin’ To San Antone,” “Mississippi Cotton Picking Delta Town” and “Kiss An Angel Good Mornin,‘” the massive #1 crossover hit that sold over a million singles and helped him land the Country Music Association’s (CMA) “Entertainer of the Year” award in 1971 and “Top Male Vocalist” awards of 1971 and 1972. Sadly he fell ill and passed away on December 12, 2020 due to complications from COVID-19, barely a month after an unplanned final curtain call at the CMA Awards where he was honored with the CMA’s “Lifetime Achievement Award.”