“‘A Shoulder to Cry On”
Charley Pride
Written by Merle Haggard
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
April 14, 1973
It’s one thing to cover the great artists from a generation earlier and have a hit.
It’s another thing entirely to be able to cull material from one of your contemporaries and make it your own, something that a bunch of future Hall of Famers were doing during this increasingly compelling era of country music.
Charley Pride can’t pull off lovable louse as well as Merle Haggard, so he softens the edges of this Haggard composition, leaning into the undercurrent of empathy that Haggard downplays in his own version.
Basically, the focus remains on the guy when Haggard sings it. It’s about his own guilt and emotional turmoil.
Pride makes it about the woman who’s being taken advantage of, emphasizing how his actions impact her with his tender performance.
Pride covering Haggard demonstrates how artists who are executing at the highest levels of excellence can draw inspiration from each other, and how they can preserve their own points of view even when recording material that is so distinctly signature in style to the original artist.
What a wonderful record to revive this feature with.
“’A Shoulder to Cry On” gets an A.
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