Many of Jerry Matheny’s memories about recording Brook Benton’s songs with the late Charley Pride have been lost to time. In the musician’s defense, it’s been over 40 years since those sessions.
Yet Matheny recalls one thing about Pride as if it were yesterday.
“He was just a class act,” Matheny said during a recent conversation. “The guy was just all class. He treated everybody great. … He had a lot of heart and soul; he put a lot of feeling in his songs. He was just a humble guy, even though [with] all of his fame, he still sat down and talked to you like you were his best friend.”
Five years ago this December, the country icon died in Dallas at the age of 86 from complications from COVID-19. On Friday, Pride’s estate will unveil a new, previously unheard album he cut four decades ago and never released.
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Endlessly: A Tribute to Brook Benton, produced by Bob Pickering, will be released on Sept. 19 via Music City Records. That date is significant, as it would’ve been Benton’s 94th birthday — the South Carolina singer-songwriter died in 1988 at 56 years old.
Benton was a pathbreaking Black artist who moved between R&B and country, often blurring the boundaries between the genres, much as Pride himself would do about a decade after Benton’s first success. Although Benton had success in country music, it was primarily Benton’s R&B output which Pride sought to honor with this project.
Endlessly, which in its current incarnation sounds for all the world like a completely finished, polished album, was never released for unclear reasons.
In 2017, the reels for the project were discovered in a storage room in Pride’s production office in Dallas. In 2021, the year after Pride’s death, the tapes were transferred to multi-track digital audio files for mixing and mastering.
Matheny, who toured with Garland native LeAnn Rimes from 1995-2000 and was Pride’s lead guitarist until his death, worked on what would become Endlessly alongside a handful of top shelf North Texas musicians: Bassist Chuck Rainey, drummer/percussionist Gene Glover, jazz pianist Fred Crane and saxophonist Billy Briggs Jr.
“Almost all the guys he was using were from the Dallas area and were all friends of mine,” Matheny said. “[Pride] was a great guy to work for — it was really probably the best job I’ve ever had, as far as everything was run so smooth, like a tight ship, you know?”
Pride was between record labels at the time (leaving RCA Records; joining 16th Avenue records), and the 10-song collection is a fascinating left turn for the staunchly traditional Pride — although Benton’s work climbed the pop charts (most notably with his 1959 Top Five hit “It’s Just a Matter of Time”), Pride also weaves in R&B, soul and a few Nashvillian flourishes.
For Matheny, the chance to finally hear those sessions as finished songs is “awesome.”
“I couldn’t even remember all the songs we did,” he said. “I just remembered one or two, but it was great to hear it. I think they did a really good job, with all the string arrangements and everything they added — I’d never heard it with that before. We just did the rhythm tracks.
“It just sat there for all those years, and it’s just refreshing to hear it. To me, it still holds up, even though it was cut over 40 years ago, it still sonically sounds good.”
Preston Jones is a North Texas freelance writer and regular contributor to KXT. Email him at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky (@prestonjones.bsky.social).Our work is made possible by our generous, music-loving members. If you like how we lift up local music, consider becoming a KXT sustaining member right here.
