Long Lost Charley Pride Album Tributes Brook Benton

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A long lost album from Charley Pride, Endlessly: A Tribute To Brook Benton, is set for release Sept. 19. The album’s first single “Thank You Pretty Baby” is out now on all digital platforms.

In 2017, a couple of forgotten reels were found buried deep in a storage room in Pride’s production office in Dallas. After his death, it was confirmed that the multi-track reels contained the long-lost Brook Benton tribute recordings Pride recorded in the ’80s but never released. In 2021 the tapes were carefully transferred to multi-track digital audio files, and will now be released on Music City Records.

Brimming with vintage country, R&B and pop, the retro-sonic homage to singer/songwriter Benton was originally recorded in Dallas during a brief mid-1980s interlude between Pride’s RCA Records and 16th Avenue Records recording contracts. Endlessly features songs from Brook’s initial 1959-1961 flurry of hits including “It’s Just a Matter of Time,” “Endlessly,” “Thank You Pretty Baby,” “So Close,” “So Many Ways” and “Kiddio.”

The new project marks the 94th birthday of Benton, who exploded on the pop music scene in 1959 with “It’s Just a Matter of Time” and notched a string of 30 Top-40 R&B hits, including several major pop crossovers and Top 10 pop duets with Dinah Washington. 

Lorie Hollabaugh
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