Sixteen years ago, an email with what I thought at the time was one of the most intriguing subject lines in all my years of receiving story pitches hit my inbox.
“Help me continue this comeback story.”
In hindsight – and full transparency – the sender of the message had everything to do with my intrigue. I couldn’t believe the late Black music PR legend Juanita Stephens was sending me an email.
Her note was a request to interview Charlie Wilson for a preview feature ahead of his visit to The Ambassador. The “yes” was instantaneous. The outcome was a vulnerable, inspiring and prophetic conversation.
Wilson spoke of the years he spent in the vicious cycle of addiction. He told a story of the time he was in crack house getting high when a Gap Band song came on the radio. Wilson told the person he was smoking with that the voice they were hearing was his – and he is going to be back on the radio and as big as he was during his Gap Band days. The man laughed in his face.
Wilson had the last laugh – but he gave God, and his wife, the glory for his R&B return. He talked about his love for St. Louis, and how he will come back every chance he gets.
The conversation went so well that he asked Juanita to coordinate a backstage meeting at the North County concert hall.
“This is just the beginning,” Wilson said during the brief, but warm and impactful meeting. “God is gonna have me in stadiums and arenas.”
On Sunday, September 7, he will headline the “Uncle Charlie’s R&B Cookout” tour along with Babyface, El DeBarge and K-Ci Haley at Hollywood Casino Amphitheater.
Wilson has played The Fabulous Fox, Chaifetz Arena and Enterprise Center in the years since his self-fulfilling proclamation. On Sunday he will return to Hollywood Casino – where he played three years ago.
Stephens, who passed away in May of this year, helped craft the “Uncle Charlie” persona that eventually landed him in the elite group of artists at the top of the urban adult contemporary touring circuit.
“This city was there for me all the time, so as long as y’all will have me, I’m going to keep coming back,” Wilson told The American in 2013.
His memories about his connection with the city are long and deep. They go all the way back to when he used to come here with his late brothers as the lead singer of The Gap Band in the late 1970s and 1980s.
“We used to play there all the time back in the day when Dr. Jockenstein was the jock of the whole city,” Wilson sad. “And we had such a good time. St. Louis is a funk city.”
St. Louis is also an R&B city, one that has embraced him in a major way in the 20 years since he staged his comeback with the 2005 release of “Charlie, Last Name Wilson.”
He reciprocates by providing them with a show they won’t forget.
“Every night I go on stage, I act like it’s going to be my last performance – so I try to give the show of my life every time I come out on that stage,” Wilson said. “When people come to a Charlie Wilson show, I want them to leave saying, ‘I’ve never seen anybody work so hard’ – and to see that I did it from the bottom of my heart.”
Living It content is produced with funding by the ARPA for the Arts grants program in partnership with the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis and the Community Development Administration.
