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Charley Pride

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Charley Frank Pride was the fourth of eleven children born to sharecroppers Tessie and Fowler McArthur Pride in Sledge, Mississippi on March 18, 1938. Pride’s father named him Charl, but the midwife wrote Charley on his birth certificate and the name stuck. It was from the family’s Philco radio that Pride learned to love country music. He picked cotton alongside his parents as a young boy and saved enough money to buy a Silverstone guitar from Sears and Roebuck. Though Pride loved to sing, it was baseball that lured him first. Pride ended his schooling at the eleventh grade when his parents gave their permission for him to leave home to play baseball in 1953. By 1954, Pride was signed with the Memphis Red Socks, a Negro League baseball team. He went on to play for a number of teams including the Louisville Clippers and the Birmingham Black Barons. Two years later, he was drafted and married his sweetheart, Rozene, while in the U.S. Army. They settled in Montana where Pride found steady work and also played semi-pro baseball. However, he never quite made the grade for the major leagues. After a final tryout for the New York Mets, Pride returned home to Nashville, Tennessee. He met Jack Johnson who heard his music and sent him home with the promise that he would land him a management contract. A year later, Pride returned to Nashville where he was introduced to Jack Clements, who had him record two songs that landed in the hands of RCA Records executive Chet Atkins. Pride was signed to his record label.
Pride’s first single record hit the airwaves in 1966. He had his first number one hit, “All I Have To Offer You (Is Me)”, on the Cash Box Country Singles Chart in 1969. Over three decades, Pride has remained one of the top twenty best-selling country artists of all-time. His incredible legacy includes: thirty-one gold and four platinum albums; one which has reached quadruple platinum (The Best of Charley Pride). Pride is second in sales for RCA Records only to Elvis Presley. In 1971, Charley won two GRAMMY® Awards related to his Gospel album DID YOU THINK TO PRAY – “Best Sacred Performance, Musical (Non-Classical)” for the album, as well as “Best Gospel Performance Other Than Soul” for the single “Let Me Live.” Later that year, his #1 crossover hit “Kiss An Angel Good Morning” sold over a million singles and helped him to win the Country Music Association’s (CMA) “Entertainer of the Year” award and the “Top Male Vocalist” awards of 1971 and 1972. It also brought him a “Best Male Country Vocal Performance” GRAMMY® Award in 1972. Some of Charley’s unforgettable hits from the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s include “All I Have To Offer You Is Me,” “Is Anybody Goin’ To San Antone,” “Amazing Love,” “Mississippi Cotton Pickin’ Delta Town,” “Burgers And Fries,” “Roll On Mississippi” and “Mountain Of Love.” After parting ways with RCA Records in 1986, Charley spent the remainder of the decade releasing albums on the 16th Avenue Records label.

Charley wrote an autobiography in the early 1990s, with the assistance of Jim Henderson, called PRIDE: THE CHARLEY PRIDE STORY. That book covers the events of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s in significantly more detail.

In 1993, Pride was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry, 26 years after he had first played there as a guest. Charley is always quick to point out that he’d always had an open invitation to join the Opry from as early as his first appearance in 1967.

In 1994, Charley Pride published his book Pride: The Charley Pride Story. Pride spoke with John Seigenthaler on Nashville Public Television about the book and his childhood in Mississippi, the impacts of racism throughout his career, and his battle with depression. In 2016, Pride was selected as one of 30 artists to perform on Forever Country, a mash-up track of "Take Me Home, Country Roads", "On the Road Again", and "I Will Always Love You", which celebrates 50 years of the Country Music Association Awards. Pride released his first album in six years, titled Music in My Heart, on July 7, 2017. In 2020, the CMA announced that Pride would receive the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award at the 54th Country Music Association Awards in recognition of his work in the genre. The CEO of the CMA explained that "Charley Pride is the epitome of a trailblazer. Few other artists have grown country music's rich heritage and led to the advancement of country music around the world like Charley. His distinctive voice has created a timeless legacy that continues to echo through the country community today. We could not be more excited to honor Charley with one of CMA's highest accolades." Becoming a trailblazing Country Music superstar was an improbable destiny for Charley Pride considering his humble beginnings as a sharecropper’s son on a cotton farm in Sledge, Mississippi. His unique journey to the top of the music charts includes a detour through the world of Negro league, minor league and semi-pro baseball as well as hard years of labor alongside the vulcanic fires of a smelter. But in the end, with boldness, perseverance and undeniable musical talent, he managed to parlay a series of fortuitous encounters with Nashville insiders into an amazing legacy of hit singles and tens of millions in record sales.

Pride died from complications related to COVID-19 in Dallas, on December 12, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Texas. He was 86 years old.

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