Distinctly Montana Magazine

21 w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m driving back home to receive a few pre- cious hours of sleep, and then going to the smelter to work. In his autobiography, Pride empha- sizes that he didn't encounter much explicit racism in the Helena of the ear- ly 1960s, but there were some old tim- ers who Pride described as a bit out of touch, such as a friend who bet Charley Pride $5 that being white was a legal prerequisite to being a president. Pride took the bet, telling him that there was no such law. As Pride said in his book, "[h]e still owes me five dollars, and he probably still thinks I was wrong." A 1967 piece in the Independent Re- cord may tell a more nuanced story: "Mrs. Charles Pride, wife of Mon- tana's great Negro country and western recording star, told in a recent interview that she and her husband were refused service in a Helena restaurant, and a real estate agent refused to show them a house... Montana does have a sizeable non-white population in its Indian citi- zens, and Mrs. Pride is more concerned about the attitude Montanans have to- wards them than their reaction towards Negroes. They're treated much like Ne- groes in the South, she says." Nevertheless, as Pride wrote, "[l] iving there—working, singing, play- ing ball—I had come to believe that some things transcended the worst of human nature and that music was one of them." Indeed, the Prides liked Helena well enough that "we began to think of Montana as our home." Despite his success in winning over Helena's crowds, Charley still did not seriously consider a career in music. He certainly wasn't planning on en- tering a genre of music typically domi- nated by white performers. As ever, he wrote, "I wanted to play ball." Indeed, he managed to get a spring tryout for the Angels. He traveled to Palm Springs, taking a leave of ab- sence from work, and paying for the trip himself. There, overeager to im- press recruiters, he pitched too hard. His arm aching, he was devastated to hear the Angels' pitching coach tell him "Charley, you just don't have a major league pitching arm. We're go- ing to have to let you go." The Missoulian somewhat snidely re- marked that "Pride,... a happy, cheerful, pleasant Southern chap, a singer and a musician as well, ...might do better if he found out just what he could do best in baseball, not trying all spots." The next year, ahead of another try- out with the New York Mets, Pride's ankle was broken in a smelter accident. In a twist of fate, the injury made base- ball impossible but didn't have much of an effect on singing country music. It may have even enhanced it. Pride re- membered how Johnny Walker, owner of the Corner Bar in Anaconda, took out ads in the local paper that read, "CHARLEY PRIDE... And His Broken Leg Will Be At The CORNER BAR... Saturday night... Come on Down And Watch The Fights." Here Pride pithily clar'fied that the fights referred to televised boxing, not to hypothetical fights over his pres- ence in the bar. Through his Helena performances, Pride met Dwight "Tiny" Stokes*, ra- dio DJ and musician, who mentioned an upcoming concert with country music legend Red Foley. While it had been a long time since Foley's heyday in the '40s and '50s, he had many de- voted fans in the Treasure State who remembered hits like "Tennessee Saturday Night" and "Freight Train Blues." Also on the bill was Red So- vine, best known for trucking songs like "Teddy Bear" and "Phantom 309." Stokes encouraged Charley to approach the two Reds and ask them if he could play a song or two as well. BEST LOCAL FRESH BAKED HAND-CUT FRIES roadhousegf.com vote for BURGER IN

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