Charles Gross has been on a path to success since his time at Parsons High School, where he was involved in Key Club, FCA, SkillsUSA, band, forensics and theater.
“There was nothing I wasn’t doing because I was playing sports as well,” he said during a recent phone conversation. “I played football, basketball and track.”
When not doing those things, one could find him in Sherry Bowin’s media room working on photographs, editing video or videography projects with Larrian Kendricks, his best friend.
“We spent so many hours in that classroom from making music to editing our own show within a show. We were just so passionate about it. With that said, I took it on to college,” Gross said, a 2010 PHS graduate.
Having placed at a state SkillsUSA video competition, Gross received a scholarship to attend Coffeyville Community College’s video production program. He also played football. He thought things were fairly lined out, but it was not where he felt he was supposed to be.
He left CCC, came home and joined the recording arts program at Labette Community College under the tutelage of Russell Head.
“It was a great program. The equipment that we were able to use was amazing,” Gross said. “So that is where the passion started was in that classroom. I didn’t have the personal interest in DJing before. I was all vid-
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eo production, being behind the camera. But Eli Woodman had brought his DJ controller to class one day and he just left it there. I asked if I could use it and I fell in love. I think I held onto that thing for four years after.”
He began to DJ on weekends. Neil Springer helped guide and assist before Gross acquired the needed equipment.
“He helped me tremendously. Time after time after time, he helped me with the DJ equipment and things like that,” Gross said.
Within that time frame, Gross said, he was invited on a spring break trip with a friend, Charles Mack, to South Padre Island, Texas. The trip was coordinated through Inertia Tours. He packed a camera.
Among the pictures he took, Gross took one of Nick Brown, the host of MTV’s “Spring Break,” and posted it on social media. Brown saw the picture, contacted Gross and asked him to return to the island for spring break the next year.
“That is how I got the access and how I got the job with Inertia Tours, becoming the official photographer and videographer through Inertia Tours for ‘Ultimate Spring Break.’ I was shooting all these celebrities from hip-hop to pop to EDM and shooting some of the biggest artists like Lil Wayne, Gucci and MGK,” he said. “Nick Brown is the reason I got that job and was a person in the real world who shifted everything for me.”
Meanwhile, back at home, between those two spring breaks, Gross said other passions held their place in his young life, such as basketball and playing sports. So when a call came from Independence Community College asking him to play football, he couldn’t say no and he left the recording arts program at LCC.
“Everything was going great, best season. Then while I was at Independence, I got offered a coaching job,” he said. “I got offered to coach basketball at Independence High School as a student coach. I took it.”
He was settling into this new situation when he got a call from LCC coach Anna Nimz telling him St. Paul needed a middle school coach. He felt he couldn’t pass up the opportunity, so he jumped on board. The position was one he enjoyed, as he got to coach Adam Albertini, who went on to Pittsburg State, and others.
“We had so many great athletes in that group at St. Paul,” he said.
He had just begun his position at St. Paul when Altoona-Midway High School’s head basketball coach Mitch Rolls got the position as head women’s basketball coach at LCC and needed an assistant. He reached out to Gross, who took that job, leaving him juggling the middle school and college positions.
He quit DJing on the weekends during that time. He was handling LCC practices in the morning and then heading to St. Paul, where he was implementing some of what they were teaching the girls at college. In his second year, his St. Paul girls walked away with the league championship, having lost only one game. While at the top, he made the decision to leave the two coaching positions to take one at Southeast High School with coach Dan Wall.
“I was the JV coach at Southeast High School,” Gross said. “And at this point, DJing started picking up again. I started DJing more on the side and on the weekends.”
His identity as DJ Chuck G was developing in a Pittsburg bar called Bourbon Street.
“It became such a big thing, people were traveling two and three hours just to come,” he said.
After a year at Southeast, Gross heard a coaching position might be coming open in Parsons, which had been a dream of his since he started coaching. He quit his job at Southeast and worked for USD 503 as a paraprofessional at Guthridge to get his foot in the door.
The next year, however, he didn’t get the coaching job and left USD 503.
“It was 2020, when all the madness started. I had received a preparatory high school job in Atlanta, but the school closed down because of COVID, so I never headed out there,” he said.
At that point, he felt he needed a change to shake things up. He moved to Tulsa, where two of his siblings lived.
“That’s where the story really begins. By me not getting that job, it changed my life, because after that moment I was like, OK, What’s next? Because that was one of my longtime (dreams) was I wanted to coach at home,” he said.
During COVID, he found himself in the same position as many, without a job and sleeping on his sister’s couch. Schools were closed, and he didn’t know what tomorrow would bring.
“We go through that first part of COVID. It was rough. Then DJing is starting to pop back up and I’m driving back and forth between Tulsa and Joplin every weekend practically to DJ to stay afloat,” he said. “Then I went back to Parsons to get all my stuff to move into my own place, and my whole truck with all of my stuff was stolen, with all my equipment, everything except my DJing laptop. Everything I had was taken.”
He found himself in a fix because he had a wedding the next week and he couldn’t do it because he didn’t have the equipment.
“I felt I needed to do it. I knew everything had hit the walls, but I felt the need to do it, so I ended up calling around and I reached out to a service in Indianapolis, Indiana, and I let them know my situation, and they offered to bring everything. … They really were very generous and understood and felt for me, so they donated some to help me,” he said. “At the wedding, everything shifts. If I had not gone to that wedding, DJ Chuck G would not be the DJ Chuck G known around the country. That it is, because at that wedding is where I was seen. Even though everything I had was stolen, at that wedding is where my breakthrough was at.
“In that same moment, the owner of Inertia Tours had pulled me aside to talk to me and said ‘Anytime you want to be the spring break DJ, it’s yours.’ That’s how I got the position in South Padre Island for Inertia Tours as the DJ. Before the wedding, none of them (with Inertia Tours) really knew I DJed except for the two I did the wedding for because they had me on social media.”
Once back from the wedding, a business owner in Tulsa called him and offered to get him DJ gear.
“He had never even heard me DJ before. He went in and purchased DJ gear with me, and was like, ‘You come and DJ for me until it’s paid off and then it’s yours and you can do whatever you like,’” Gross said. “That was in 2020. I’m still his resident DJ to this day. Now we’re the bestest of friends.”
Forward to 2021. In Oklahoma and Kansas, he was still being hired for DJ gigs, but that March is the first year he DJed for spring break for Inertia Tours.
“It wasn’t until South Padre where people were like, ‘Oh, he’s a professional DJ.’ Because when you are performing in front of thousands and thousands of people … and opening shows for artists where there are 15,000 people, there’s a different feel to it.”
Back in Tulsa, he was DJing a birthday party when he was offered the job as an in-game host and DJ for the University of Tulsa. Now he is hosting a larger audience on game day, getting everyone’s energy ramped up for the game.
“I walk around Tulsa now and it’s like, ‘Oh, DJ Chuck G,’ type of situation. When I first moved here I knew no one but my sister and brother and now it’s like, ‘Hey, can we take a picture?’” “I’ve opened up shows for Koe Wetzle, Brantley Gilbert, Cardi B. It’s just a long list,” Gross said of DJing. “Now, this is my job.”
Besides his job with UT, he’s also a DJ at Tulsa Tough, one of biggest cycling events. That got him working with River Parks Authority in Tulsa, and DJing for Red Bull, Monster Energy, OSU and Scratch.
“And now Scratch has me DJing all over the country,” he said.
Erik Jorgensen is the official DJ and music director for the Dallas Cowboys. He works with other sports teams and events and hired Gross for his first professional sports gig with Athletes Unlimited, a women’s basketball organization. “After I got back, they were doing replays and I could hear myself on TV while I was in a restaurant,” Gross said.
As he looks over the last 14 years, some moments have been mind-boggling, like when he was with Koe Wetzel and backstage with his band, and people that helped with that.
“Now my network, that is insane. That is what is more mind-boggling to me. The phone numbers I have in my phone, that is what is mind-boggling to me. That no matter where I am, I have a connection,” he said. “They always say ‘Your network is your net worth.’
He paused, thinking back to his time at PHS, and he and Larrian Kendricks having a show through their videography class called “What’s Up?”
“It was all about being creative, and that’s what she is doing with that class now. Larrian is teaching that same class now, and she works to push them out to the best of their ability in being creative, to let their mind free,” Gross said.
That creativity, encouraged so strongly in Bowin’s class, is still what leads the way for him today.
To students currently in high school, he encourages them to let loose with their creativity and pursue a dream.
“Do it. Do it. Go out. Do it. Try it. Find out what it is that is for you. I think there are a lot of kids that think you can only do one thing and as you can tell from me, one thing was not it. I think that is what I was able to do, to find. What fulfilled me is just going out there and doing it,” Gross said. “If you don’t try, how will you ever know?”
