The music industry is rife with projects from people who are not career musicians. While the stereotype is of an awkward, misguided vanity project, sometimes people such as Bradley Cooper, Sissy Spacek, or John Corbett have been surprisingly skilled on that front. Disc jockeys who make the jump are especially susceptible to being tagged as self-indulgent, minimally talented trend chasers, most notably Rick Dees's "Disco Duck." So where on that spectrum does Charlie Chase fall?
For the younger crowd, Charlie Chase is a country radio DJ. Active since the 70s, he's best known for his work with Lorianne Crook, including the talk show Crook & Chase and radio program The Crook & Chase Countdown. Though they have a natural chemistry and great broadcaster voices, their style is the same kind of cornpone, Southern grandma humor you'd expect from Hee Haw. (Sample joke: Lorianne asks Lee Greenwood why his family works with him, and Charlie butts in with "they all work cheap and they're always around.") In 1993, Charlie joined Epic Records to record My Wife... My Life. In theory, this doesn't sound like a bad idea: a well-known country DJ wanting to record songs inspired by his wife and family. Theoretically, it could appeal to fans of Bill Anderson or those albums Bobby Bare did with his wife and son.
Despite this being on most major digital platforms, a physical release is shockingly obscure. Databases such as Discogs and AllMusic just have the track listing without credits. I had to buy a copy on Amazon just to figure out who even wrote or played on this album -- and the copy I bought hadn't even been opened! One of the producers is Charlie Monk, aka the "Mayor of Music Row." He was also a veteran DJ, as well as a song publisher and industry executive who also holds a handful of songwriting and production credits. Monk co-produced with Mickey Hiter, who claims over 30 years in the industry as a producer, but I haven't found a single other cut with his name on it. (It's possible they were just small indie acts who went un-documented. He's since given up music in favor of coaching youth baseball.) It includes standard session musicians of the day, such as bassist Glenn Worf, former Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefers member Doyle Grisham, and the Nashville String Machine. Writers present include Jim Weatherly, Kim Williams, Skip Ewing, Eddy Raven, and... two songs by Dana Sigmon and Glenn Ashworth, the team behind Buddy "Cooter Brown" Causey's "Pure Bred Redneck."
The first track is "My Wife," written by Monk. It features the narrator's answers to his daughter's inquiries on the meaning of the word "wife." While a few of them are a bit sappy ("she's so tender, she'll cry over practically nothing"), there are a few lines I like. For instance, I like "My wife is the willow...together we bend and adjust to what the winds of life bring to us. You know, had we been oaks... we probably would've snapped and broken in a storm a long time ago." Even with the syrupy strings behind it, this is somewhat better than I expected. The setup is fine (I could easily see a young enough child not knowing what a "wife" is), some of his answers are mildly clever and heartwarming, and I like that he bothered to show that even the best of marriages aren't 100% happy and effortless. This isn't a song I would go out of my way for, but it's a hell of a lot more grounded and believable than "Help Pour Out the Rain" or "God's Will."
Thankfully, the album gets a bit of tempo on track three, a barroom shuffle about "My Home Town (Rogersville, TN)." I find it a bit hyperbolic that a town big enough to have had a Kmart in the 80s still had old men whittling on the front porch as their hound dogs watched, seeing as I also grew up in a small town big enough to have had a Kmart in the 80s. (Maybe it's different in the South?) The song's relatively loose feel does a lot to make Charlie's shortcomings as a vocalist a lot more palatable. I also like that he name-drops WRGS, the actual radio station where he used to work. It's probably that little personal touch that makes this go down easier than, say, "Sweet Southern Comfort." (Wow, two digs at Buddy Jewell in the same review. I'm on a roll.)
So after three not-terrible tracks, here's where we start to go off the rails. Every '90s country fan knows Collin Raye's "Love, Me." It's a fantastic song in my opinion, well worth its legacy as a tear-jerker standard. (The only reason it didn't make my "Top 300 Singles of the 90s" list is because I intentionally wanted to focus more on lesser-known songs.) Instead of playing the song straight, Charlie chose to speak the verses, adding a bunch of unnecessary fluff ("You know, it seems that the older people get, they don't grow apart -- they grow closer together. And it reminded me of a note my grandma wrote...") before melodramatically talking his way through the rest of the familiar verses like a poor man's Paul Harvey. Of all acts, Western Flyer -- a full year before their eponymous debut single, and two before the hauntingly fantastic "Cherokee Highway" -- carries the chorus. Between the baffling decisions of the verses and the unnecessarily Eagles-like execution of the chorus, the simplicity of "Love, Me" has been stripped away.
Track five is also a cover; specifically, the Oak Ridge Boys's "Thank God for Kids," aka "that one Oaks song that gets played every Christmas even though it's not really a Christmas song, simply because it was on a Christmas album." I kind of hate to say this as a fan of both the Oaks and the song's writer Eddy Raven, but this one's near the bottom for me on both fronts. ("The closest thing to Heaven is a child" was always a bit too Precious Moments for me.) Very little is changed from the original, to the point that Charlie almost seems to be mimicking William Lee Golden's voice -- which becomes painfully apparent when the Oaks themselves overpower him on the chorus.
What kind of song can you sing about "Hands"? You know, other than "Daddy's Hands" (aka "I wish people would learn already that Holly Dunn has other songs") or Steve Wariner's "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle." The hands in this song "cradled and sheltered a baby boy thrust suddenly into a great big frightening world." Yes, they're his mom's. She cares for her growing boy, but also guides him. If you guessed that this is leading up to singing about the hands of Jesus... then yes, that is exactly where this song goes. And yes, that chorus singing "those precious hands" over and over is as tacky as you're picturing. It's still pretty high on the glurge scale, but at least 1.) nobody dies at the end and 2.) the song doesn't drag out the Jesus-y bits for another three minutes.
"When You're in Love" was another pleasant surprise from a production standpoint, building off a doo-wop a cappella vibe (once again, Western Flyer) with some tasteful percussion. Charlie talk-sings his way around a "power of love" narrative that, while not the most original thing ever, has a few cute turns of phrase like "the man with the shovel or the man with the plan" and "low on charisma or loaded with charm." I would have given him maybe a couple more passes through to loosen up the vocal a bit more (and stop him from doing that vocal fry on the hook), but this is another moment where the tempo -- and easily the best production on the album -- make a welcome change of pace and possibly the album's most enjoyable track.
Not as welcome is his attempt at covering Gladys Knight's "Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me." Yes, you read that right; he put a Gladys Knight cover on here. As limited as he is vocally, he was at least smart enough to avoid some of the more complex phrasings of the original. But the result is a bland, saxophone-drenched karaoke read of the original at best. There's no sense of soul in it, in a way that reminds me of Reba McEntire's dreary cover of Patti LaBelle's "On My Own" (which I'm certain killed the saxophone trend in country music single-handedly). I actually would have preferred to hear him stumbling over melisma and notes way out of his range, as it would've actually been entertaining for a listen or two and not dreadfully boring.
Another narrative, "Mom and Dad," deals with Charlie pondering what his then-teenage kids think of him, and contrasting it with a note he supposedly wrote at age 18. Said note has him laying out how grown-up he feels now, all the things he thanks his parents for. It's the same maudlin stuff you'd think: mom cooks and does the laundry, and gives "unwanted music lessons," dad married the "greatest woman," "let him cruise," and told bad jokes. (I could do without the casual mentions of spanking.) To be fair, I do like that he brings up "it's okay for men to cry," which is a welcome diversion from the stodgy Father Knows Best stereotypes. But for the most part, it's like someone wanted to write their own version of Melba Montgomery's "No Charge," but forgot what that song was actually about. And as someone familiar with the concept of unrequited love, not to mention people who use "love" as a smokescreen for gaslighting and manipulation, the closing line of "you get the same feeling giving love as you do receiving it" sits wrong with me.
So what did critics think? I found one hilariously scathing review printed in four different newspapers (sadly, uncredited each time) which gave the album one star out of five. "If [the title track] doesn't send you scurrying for the barf bag, there's more...Most intolerable is a remake of Gladys Knight's 'Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me', surely one of the worst things ever hatched by Nashville masterminds." Rich Kienzle of Country Music magazine couldn't hold back the snark, either; he wrote a review that I'll admit is way funnier than mine, so I've chosen to include it in its entirety. Cash Box was considerably kinder, stating that the album "comes from life's simple pleasures and common hardships with an honestly heartfelt delivery."
The truth is, I wanted to be way snarkier on this album. It's not by any means a standout, but it did surprise me a couple times, such as "My Home Town" and "When You're in Love." It's still incredibly corny and schmaltzy, self-indulgent, and a little misguided at times. He knows he can't sing very well, so he opts for narrating or letting guest vocalists carry most of the song -- but outside the Gladys Knight cover, he doesn't embarrass himself as a vocalist. The songs are mostly formulaic and saccharine, but at the same time, he mostly avoids any sanctimoniousness. In an era where some of the lesser lights such as Davis Daniel, Dude Mowrey, or Daron Norwood were still doing "novelty song, mid-tempo, ballad, cover song, and six random bits of filler," the song variety here is surprisingly above average. But most of all, the reason I can't fully hate this album is because it feels like something Charlie Chase wanted to do. If you still remember who Charlie Chase is, this might be worth a couple curiosity listens. I'd give it maybe a two out of five, or just recommend you download "My Home Town" and "When You're in Love" individually.
