You don’t get these kinds of fireworks from the CMA Awards anymore.
With the 2024 CMA Awards coming up this week, we pretty much know what we’re going to expect this week: A sanitized, pop-infused ceremony featuring all of the usual suspects from the major labels, while leaving out some of the ACTUAL biggest names in country music. Guys like Sturgill Simpson, Zach Bryan…even Muscadine Bloodline, who opened for Post Malone on his recent tour but aren’t signed to a label, so they’ll never get the recognition they deserve from these label-driven awards shows.
Of course that’s really nothing new. Even back in 1975, there was quite a bit of controversy over the awards being too “pop” and leaving out actual country artists – and Charlie Rich decided to make quite the statement.
Rich had his first number one in 1973, “Behind Closed Doors,” followed by “The Most Beautiful Girl,” which also took the top spot on the country charts. Those two hit singles landed him three CMA Awards in 1973: Best Male Vocalist, Album of the Year, and Single of the Year. He followed that up with 5 more number one’s the next year and took home the 1974 CMA Entertainer of the Year.
But after a rough 1975 that contained many off-stage incidents due to his excessive drinking, Rich was left out of the CMA Awards nominations, instead being asked to present the award for Entertainer of the Year.
The problem was that, by the time they got to the final award of the evening, Rich was hammered. As he took to the stage visibly intoxicated, Rich slurred his way through the nominees for the night’s biggest prize: Waylon Jennings, Loretta Lynn, Ronnie Milsap, Conway Twitty, and John Denver.
Then, as he announced the award was going to “my friend, Mr. John Denver,” Rich pulled out a lighter and set the slip containing Denver’s name on fire, right there on the stage.
Now, Denver wasn’t at the awards show and accepted the prize remotely, so he didn’t have any idea what was going on. But many saw the move by Rich as a comment on the night’s top prize going to an artist like Denver, who was often considered too “pop” for the country genre.
The former director of the CMA Awards, Jo Walker-Meador, had a different theory, and thought that Rich was upset about being left out of the Entertainer of the Year category after winning the award the year before.
But Rich’s son said there was a simpler explanation: He just thought it would be funny, and said his father felt bad that other people thought he was making a statement on Denver:
“I’ll tell you why I thought he did it.
Number one, he thought it would be funny.
He set it up by talking about how the potential winners were probably nervous, as he had been the previous year.
Number two, bad judgement.
He had recently broken his foot in a freak accident at his home in Memphis. It sounds funny, but he got his foot caught in an awkward position while getting out of a reclining chair. He cracked several bones in his foot.
So, due to the pain, he took pain medication the night of the show: Bad idea! Secondly, he and another country star got to drinking Gin and Tonics while waiting in the dressing room.
The show was long, so by the time Dad was supposed to go on, the drinks on top of the medication got him buzzed. So, there ya’ go. That’s why I think he did it. Primarily he thought it would be funny.
I know the last thing my father would have wanted to do was set himself up as judge of another musician. He felt badly that people thought it was a statement against John Denver.”
The incident caused Rich’s career to take a hit, and though he released a few singles that cracked the top 10, he was never able to recapture the success he had earlier in his career.
Regardless, it seems that at least one of the Entertainer of the Year nominees got a laugh out of it, with Waylon Jennings writing in his autobiography that he enjoyed that moment more than he did winning Male Vocalist of the Year:
“I was happier watching Charlie Rich get drunk and burn up the Entertainer of the Year award, holding a cigarette lighter to the envelope, please.
They went to grab him, but when Charlie was drunk, it was best to stay out of his way… Oh, yeah. John Denver won Entertainer of the Year. Now that’s what I call country.”
Rich passed away in 1995 at the age of 62, leaving behind some classic country music and an iconic moment in CMA Awards history.
