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[0:05] Donnie L. Betts: Fresh for your ears, tell everybody. It's the new podcast from the producers of Destination Freedom Black Radio Days. Produced and hosted by Donnie L. Betts of No Credits Productions comes The Eclectic. Interviews with difference makers, artists, authors, bold thinkers, people we love who get stuff done. Our guest is Mr. Charles Wright. Now, Mr. Charles Wright, he was born in Mississippi in 1940. He was a member of various groups throughout his career. I'm sure you've heard his music over the course of years, most famously, Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band. A lot of people have heard this song, "Express Yourself," and it's been used hundreds and hundreds of times. So that's a little bit of background of Mr. Charles Wright, but I want to let him tell you himself more about him. So I like to start my interviews the same way, Mr. Wright. It is tell us your full name, your mama's name, your mama's mama's name, and where you spent your childhood.

[0:58] Charles Wright: My name is Charles Williams Wright. I was born in the Cotton Fashion, Mississippi. My mother's name is Magnolia. My father's name is Edmund. And uh, that's about it.

[1:32] Donnie L. Betts: Okay. And you spent most of your life there until you were, um, uh, pre-teen or two?

[1:37] Charles Wright: I was 12 years old when I left there.

[1:40] Donnie L. Betts: Okay, beautiful, beautiful. And let's talk a little bit about your upbringing, your growing up. Uh, because I read your book some years ago. It's been a while since I read it, but it's called Up From Where We Come. And I think it was a fascinating read because it was really told from your real perspective. You know, it was edited by someone else, but it was really your voice that we heard in that book. And you, in your background, you said it was a hard life, you know. You, I think you describe it as one step between slavery and, uh, uh, step above slavery.

[2:16] Charles Wright: Yeah, it's uh, what they call sharecropping.

[2:19] Donnie L. Betts: Yes. Let's talk about that.

[2:23] Charles Wright: Well, sharecropping is my father was shared and uh, uh, land on by a man named Mr. Miles, who was a cruel old man. And uh, Mr. Miles provided the seeds and my father and my family, he, we did all the work and that man also somehow convinced my father that the blues was the devil's music.

[2:58] Donnie L. Betts: Huh.

[2:59] Charles Wright: So I was not allowed to listen to the blues or any secular music until I came to California and uh, freed myself from that ideology. So, uh, actually, uh, only time I really heard the blues was Muddy Waters lived right across the street from my grandmother.

[3:23] Donnie L. Betts: Oh my God. Wow.

[3:24] Charles Wright: I heard uh, two or three rehearsals, uh, his, that was about the size of it. And then, uh, my aunt had a juke joint.

[3:41] Donnie L. Betts: Your aunt had a juke joint?

[3:44] Charles Wright: My aunt.

[3:46] Donnie L. Betts: Yeah, and uh, so now was that in Clarksdale?

[3:52] Charles Wright: No, that was in Madison.

[3:55] Donnie L. Betts: Madison is nine miles out of Clarksdale.

[3:59] Charles Wright: Okay. So, uh, Clarksdale is the biggest town in that area. So anytime anybody want to know where I'm from, they can key in on Clarksdale, which is seventy-two miles south of Memphis.

[4:15] Donnie L. Betts: Right.

[4:17] Charles Wright: Anyway, uh, she had the juke joint and uh, every once in a while I get to hear a little coming from her jukebox. And that's about the size of it. When I came to California, um, when I was about fourteen years old, going to junior high school, walking home from school, the kids all singing these songs I never heard it before. So I asked them where they hearing it, and so they told me about the radio show they all listened to. So I started listening on the fly to the radio station. And man, I got hooked right away.

[5:01] Donnie L. Betts: Now that according to my reading your research, you really were connected with a gentleman named Jesse Belvin.

[5:11] Charles Wright: Yeah. Can you talk about that relationship?

[5:15] Charles Wright: Yeah, well, no, Jesse Belvin. I heard Jesse Bell and he, he was the main force in Los Angeles music, uh, for R and D music. Really called her RP if you wanna, but it was his pop music. Open your heel then see he had the most unique voice I ever heard.

[6:07] Donnie L. Betts: So I heard him sing a song called "One Little Blessing" on the radio one day. And I was so enthused by that voice. So I looked him up in the phone book and, uh, found his phone number and I called him up and I, after two or three times I got him. Mr. Belvin, I want to sing and I want to sound just like you. He gave me a great piece of advice.

[6:41] Charles Wright: He said, get your own style, boy, leave mine alone. I said, I thought that'd be a compliment. He said, you over here, Johnny Ace. I said, I heard him. I like his voice too, but your voice, you got this style. He said, if you don't get it by now, boy, I'm hanging up. I said, oh, please don't hang up. I don't know what y'all are doing, but I just want to be a part of it.

[7:10] Donnie L. Betts: Beautiful.

[7:11] Charles Wright: Yeah. So he said, um, okay, let me see. I got a rehearsal with this group called the Turks. The Turks had records on the radio too. To have a rehearsal this Saturday, you can come over, but you have to keep your mouth shut.

[7:29] Donnie L. Betts: More advice.

[7:31] Charles Wright: Yeah. So I went over there, man. I had the best time I had ever had in my life, I think.

[7:38] Donnie L. Betts: Nice.

[7:39] Charles Wright: When I left there, I just, I was, uh, you couldn't tear me away from this thing. I had to be a part of it.

[7:47] Donnie L. Betts: And how old were you then?

[7:49] Charles Wright: I was about, uh, 14.

[7:52] Donnie L. Betts: Okay, okay, fifty fifteen, maybe fifteen.

[7:56] Charles Wright: Nice, nice. So the whole time you lived in Mississippi, you hadn't had an opportunity to sing or either play an instrument, is that correct?

[8:05] Charles Wright: No, and absolutely not. My father was not going for it. Uh, I think my father died believing what Mr. Miles told him.

[8:20] Donnie L. Betts: Wow.

[8:21] Charles Wright: Wow. And just before we get to, uh, more about your music and your career, uh, didn't I try to remember reading your book and you were saying that basically you guys had to escape from this, uh, place that you were staying on the sharecropping, um, I'll call it a plantation.

[8:42] Charles Wright: Yeah, the couple of times that we did move off of his plantation. We did it in the middle of the night. Uh, we did that twice. The second time we never went back.

[8:58] Donnie L. Betts: Got it.

[8:58] Charles Wright: The first time we did, we were actually ended up going back to his plantation again. Yeah. Finally, we were able to get away.

[9:09] Donnie L. Betts: I'm so glad that you were able to do that. Because what people don't understand about sharecropping is that you never seem to get out of debt to people who are actually working the crops. Like I said, he provided the seeds. Whoever owned the property provided the seed and things like that, and actually sold the crops too. So they termed it sharecropping, but you weren't sharing anything. It was just, um, intentional servant or slave.

[9:33] Charles Wright: No, you, you get some groceries from the grocery store, the man in the grocery store then who's with the guy on the land. And like you say, you never get out of debt. We came close a couple of times, but that close thing ain't not good enough.

[9:59] Donnie L. Betts: So going back to your time at the studio, and uh, you said you went to the studio with them and you told you keep your mouth shut. But you said it was the best time you ever had in your life. So what came after that, after being in the studio with him?

[10:15] Charles Wright: Well, that was at his house, actually.

[10:17] Donnie L. Betts: Oh, okay.

[10:18] Charles Wright: Yeah. So, uh, um, after that, I, uh, after hearing the Turks, I decided to start a meal group.

[10:29] Donnie L. Betts: Hmm, okay.

[10:30] Charles Wright: So I went, uh, when I left Jesse Belvin's, I went by my cousin's house, and they didn't believe I'd been over to Jesse Belvin's house, but I told them I wanted to start a group and I wanted them to be a part of it. My cousin Amos and my cousin Helfer. And they agreed, so we all started out trying to sing like a boy, like a vocal group. Then Mr. Belvin told me one day that there was a man in the neighborhood who owned a, uh, owned a studio and, uh, had a record label. So I went by the man's face and I told him, uh, I had a group and asked him, could we, uh, audition for him? He said, yeah, we're gonna bring them in here until you think they're ready.

[11:22] Donnie L. Betts: Okay.

[11:23] Charles Wright: So when I thought we were halfway ready, I took the group over there one night. Um, my cousin Amos, he sang like a songbird. So he sang the first song to then I stepped up to the mic. Actually, the man told us that, yo, y'all ain't ready yet, so what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna record you so you see how you sound. So when I stepped up to the mic, he said, oh no, don't you ever try to sing lead again.

[11:59] Donnie L. Betts: Wow.

[12:00] Charles Wright: Stay in the background for the rest of your life.

[12:07] Donnie L. Betts: So that hurt me so bad, man. Uh, so there this tunnel, uh, where the kids could go under the tunnel to go across the street to get to school.

[12:16] Charles Wright: Yes.

[12:17] Donnie L. Betts: So I went in there every night and I practiced and I practiced. And I wrote some songs. I went back to his studio by myself one day, and I sat down at his piano, hoping he allowed me to finish the first verse. And I sang my song "Eternally."

[13:10] Charles Wright: He said, you're not the same guy. You can't be. You, I told you to stay in the background. So you got everything that it takes, uh, you're gonna be my superstar from now on. Next time I go to the studio, I'm taking you with me.

[13:28] Donnie L. Betts: So I said, what a change of heart, huh?

[13:31] Charles Wright: Yeah, uh, so he did, and I recorded my first hit record, "Eternity" by Lil' Charles Wright, C H O L L Y. But, uh, after he, we recorded it, it sat in the corner of his office for maybe seven or eight months. I gave it up on the whole thing. And I disrupt it came by and leased it from him, and uh, he made it a local hit record.

[14:08] Donnie L. Betts: Thank goodness for DJs.

[14:11] Charles Wright: Yeah, and I never got paid for it, so that's another story.

[14:17] Donnie L. Betts: Yes, indeed. Indeed. Uh, drawing that long list of, uh, artists who've just been stiffed out of their money over the course of the years.

[14:28] Charles Wright: Yeah. I got taken a few times before I got it together.

[14:36] Donnie L. Betts: Still, you were still a teenager, right? When all this is going on.

[14:39] Charles Wright: Yeah, I was actually 15, 16 years old. So you would you were living the learning life's hard lessons.

[14:53] Charles Wright: Yeah, I learned a lot of lessons through the way. I uh actually uh I I ended up uh uh becoming a studio musician and was the most in demand studio musician in Hollywood for a while.

[15:12] Donnie L. Betts: Okay, okay. Until uh I made uh now let uh let me ask you this. Um you also had had a relationship with the uh guitarist uh Johnny Guitar Watson. Would you speak about that relationship a bit a little bit?

[15:30] Charles Wright: Well, um now when I first uh decided to sing out me and this guy uh that was a little later on actually. There's a guy named Joe, he and I started singing duets. And uh Jesse Belvin and Eugene Church had a record out called uh Girl of My Dreams. And the B side of that was another song was a fast song. He and I was winning. We we would go on the Johnny Otis Talent Show.

[16:07] Donnie L. Betts: Oh, okay.

[16:09] Charles Wright: And he and I was winning every week. Then one week Johnny Guitar wasn't coming there playing the guitar with his fingers and his toes and his nose and everything else. He ran us out of business.

[17:19] Charles Wright: So that's when uh uh uh I first met Guitar. And down through the years we I got to know him. And uh he played on uh uh on the record uh that uh group that I was in called the SHIELDS and had a huge record. He he he played guitar on it. And uh I did I knew his mother. I mean I I just down through the years I got really got to know Johnny well. Try to save his life, but I couldn't.

[18:01] Donnie L. Betts: That's unfortunate.

[18:03] Charles Wright: Yeah. Unfortunately, he was a such a such a talent and one of my favorite uh players. He's one of what these is probably the most talented person I ever met.

[18:14] Donnie L. Betts: Is that right?

[18:15] Charles Wright: Wow. Probably the most talented person I ever met.

[18:19] Donnie L. Betts: Well that's saying a lot. And Charming, too, because Charm the Devil. So let's uh so you uh had that relationship and then talk about the founding of your uh most uh famous band and then we'll talk about one of your one of your number one hits. And that was um the Watts on the Third Street Rhythm Band. Um talk about the founding of that one.

[18:51] Charles Wright: Well um I was with uh the like I say the the Twilight is they took they took the name Little Charlie Wright away and trade this jockey one used a group's name, so I got hung up with groups after that. I did got with the SHIELDs and they had a hit record and another group called the Galahad. I had a semi-hit record. And we uh had a problem with a guy named Alan Freed, so that group broke up.

[19:29] Donnie L. Betts: Yep.

[19:30] Charles Wright: And uh uh so then I decided to learn how to play the guitar with a left-handed.

[19:39] Donnie L. Betts: Okay.

[19:40] Charles Wright: So I didn't have a guitar. My one of the guys in the group I was singing with had a guitar, his brother had a Silver Robot guitar, and he let me mess around with it. And I I had taught myself how to play the guitar.

[19:58] Donnie L. Betts: Wow.

[19:59] Charles Wright: And and uh then I went to City College to get some theory.

[20:04] Donnie L. Betts: Okay.

[20:04] Charles Wright: I learned theory. Once I did that, I became the studio musician. Then uh eventually I decided to start my own band. I started with three guys. I ended up with nine.

[20:20] Charles Wright: Yeah, in that band I had uh one point Barry White on drums. I had uh Captain from the Captain to Neil on on piano. I had uh uh Al McKay who played with Earth Wind & Fire on the guitar.

[20:38] Donnie L. Betts: Yeah, Al McKay.

[20:39] Charles Wright: Yeah, uh I had James Gatson, who's the hardest drummer in LA right now. In the studio. I ended up with nine guys and I had uh first hit big hit record we had they had a hit called Spread and Honey. And the way that came about that was uh commercial that was uh there's a magnificent money queue you ever hear of him?

[21:12] Donnie L. Betts: I I have not.

[21:14] Charles Wright: No this jockey they they claim started to ride by saying burn baby burn.

[21:12] Donnie L. Betts: Oh yes, okay, okay.

[21:12] Charles Wright: Yeah, spreading honey was a a theme song for his show for when he's coming on but it it became so popular people wanted to dance to us that we had to put it out as a single that was the group's first hit record then uh Bill Cosby we became Bill Cosby back up and Bill Cosby uh talked Warner Brothers into signing my group and I had Warner Brothers back a truck up to the club I was playing in in Hollywood and we made uh another record live called Do Your Thing.

[22:50] Donnie L. Betts: It's okay.

[22:52] Charles Wright: What you say?

[22:54] Donnie L. Betts: Okay, y'all.

[22:55] Charles Wright: What you say? Do your day do that.

[23:47] Charles Wright: Yeah, and uh loveland. I remember love several other records in there, but finally express yourself.

[24:17] Charles Wright: You don't ever need help from nobody else. All you got to do now. Express yourself. Whatever you do.

[24:35] Donnie L. Betts: It's it's the it's the hit that keeps on coming, right?

[24:38] Charles Wright: Yeah, I thank God for that song.

[24:41] Donnie L. Betts: Yeah, yeah.

[24:43] Charles Wright: Yeah, we were actually performing at Texas AM one night, and we closed with Do Your Thing, and it stops right and rump abruptly, you know. At the end, and kids kept stomping and clapping and stumping. I don't know, only God made me say I said express yourself, they went wild. So I knew right then I had something.

[25:13] Donnie L. Betts: Well, you said there's a real meaning behind the song, express yourself. Would you mind uh sharing that with uh with our audience?

[25:20] Charles Wright: Yeah, well, express yourself. I think everybody wants to do that.

[25:24] Donnie L. Betts: There you go.

[25:25] Charles Wright: I mean, everybody at some point or another want to express themselves about something.

[25:31] Donnie L. Betts: Right.

[25:37] Charles Wright: Well the song has been covered by a lot of people, you know. Now I don't know if you're a golfer, you probably are. Professional golfers association of America used express yourself as well.

[25:48] Donnie L. Betts: I I didn't know that.

[25:50] Charles Wright: Yeah, yeah. Well, maybe we should look for a check from them or something.

[25:53] Donnie L. Betts: I probably do get a check from them.

[25:58] Charles Wright: Yeah, the song is amazing. I mean, it's been in over a hundred commercials and about thirty-five movies.

[26:06] Donnie L. Betts: Wow.

[26:07] Charles Wright: Yeah, I never dreamt that it would be doing all of that. The power of your pen. You know, most recently doing the Super Bowl, uh Express Yourself with Christopher Walken and Usher.

[26:18] Donnie L. Betts: Yes, yeah, yeah.

[26:20] Charles Wright: I love it. I'm thankful, I'm thankful for it, I tell you that.

[26:23] Donnie L. Betts: Yeah, absolutely. From Sharecropper to multi, multi-hit songmaker, multi, multi-writer of hits for yourself and others. Um that man that was mean to you and your family in Mississippi, I know he's probably turning over his grave right now from the success that you have achieved.

[26:47] Charles Wright: So you know, and then you taught taught yourself to play all these instruments, Mr. Wright. You're just you're just uh a mentor and and uh hero to me. That's why I wanted to have this conversation with you. I thank you so much for your time. I don't want to keep you much longer, but I just thought people need to know about the legends and where they came from.

[27:13] Charles Wright: And I think people really should uh pick up your book. Um, and where can where can they get your book now?

[27:19] Charles Wright: The Amazon.

[27:21] Donnie L. Betts: Always you can get it at Amazon.

[27:23] Charles Wright: Okay, so author, author, Charles Wright, musician Charles Wright, songwriter Charles Wright, and overall great human being, Charles Wright. Thank you so much for being part of uh Destination Freedom Black Radio Days, The Eclectic. I'm your host, Donnie L. Betts. We've been honored to have as our guest, the legend, Charles Wright. And like I said, you've heard his music over and over again. Every time you listen to a commercial, you might hear express yourself, right?

[27:56] Charles Wright: Well, thanks for having me.

[27:58] Donnie L. Betts: Oh, it's been my pleasure.

[28:00] Charles Wright: All right, God bless your audience.

[28:02] Donnie L. Betts: Thank you.

[28:02] Charles Wright: All right, take good care.

[28:04] Donnie L. Betts: All right, God bless you. Bye-bye.

[28:07] Donnie L. Betts: I'm Donnie Betts, and this is the Eclectic. It's produced by Donnie L. Betts and No Credits Productions LLC. You're listening to The Eclectic, the series is mixed by Maurice Smith, aka Reese. Please subscribe to our podcast at Spotify, Radio Public, iTunes, Stitchers, or wherever you get your podcast. Follow us on Facebook at No Credits Productions LLC dot com, Instagram, on Twitter at Donnie Betts, or at The Eclectic the Podcast. I'm Donnie Betts. Talk to you soon.