Country Music

Country Music Hits

Uncategorized

ON DECEMBER 12, 2020, AN 86-YEAR-OLD MAN DIED IN A DALLAS HOSPITAL, THIRTY-ONE DAYS AFTER A ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE STOOD UP FOR HIM. Rozene had been his wife for sixty-four years. There were three grown children. He had spent most of his life being the only person in the room who looked like him, and he had never once made it anyone else’s problem. Charley Pride was born in Sledge, Mississippi, in 1934, the fourth of eleven children born to sharecroppers. He picked cotton. He bought his first guitar out of a Sears catalog for about ten dollars. Baseball came first. The Negro American League. The Memphis Red Sox. Two years in the Army. Then a smelter job in Montana, and a semipro team, and a habit of singing before games to bring people through the gate. He tried out for the majors around 1961. Baseball had integrated by then. It still didn’t take him. Country music had not integrated at all. It took him. RCA signed him in 1965 and sent his first singles to radio without a photograph. Disc jockeys played the voice. Twenty-nine number one records followed. He was the label’s best-selling artist after Elvis. In January 1967 he walked onto the Grand Ole Opry stage, the first Black performer to do it in decades, and told the crowd about his permanent tan before anyone else could say it first. On November 11, 2020, in a half-empty pandemic ballroom in Nashville, they gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award. He sang “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’.” He tested negative on the way in and negative on the way home. They handed him a prize for a whole life. He had a month of it left.

Charley Pride, the Voice That Outlasted Doubt

On December 12, 2020, Charley Pride died in Dallas at the age of 86, only a month after a ballroom in Nashville stood and applauded him for a lifetime of music. He left behind his wife, Rozene, three grown children, and a legacy built with patience, grace, and a voice that refused to be ignored.

His story began far from the bright lights of country music. Charley Pride was born on March 18, 1934, in Sledge, Mississippi, the son of sharecroppers and one of eleven children. He grew up picking cotton, learning responsibility early, and hearing the Grand Ole Opry on the radio. Long before fame found him, he bought his first guitar from a Sears catalog and taught himself how to turn feeling into song.

Before the stage, there was baseball

Charley Pride did not begin with music as his first dream. He played baseball in the Negro American League, worked in Montana, and served in the Army. He chased a professional baseball career with the same calm determination that would later define his music. Even when baseball did not open the door he hoped for, he kept moving forward.

Some singers try to force an audience to listen. Charley Pride did not need to. He would sing before games to draw people in, and the crowd came because the sound was honest. That same honesty carried him into country music, a space that had rarely made room for a Black performer at that time.

The music took him in

RCA signed Charley Pride in 1965, and the company first sent his records to radio without a photograph. The listeners heard the voice first. That voice became one of the great commercial successes in country music history. Charley Pride went on to earn twenty-nine number one hits and became one of RCA’s best-selling artists after Elvis Presley.

In January 1967, he walked onto the Grand Ole Opry stage as one of the first Black performers to appear there in decades. He handled the moment with calm humor and quiet confidence, never turning the spotlight into a speech. He let the songs do the talking.

A life lived with dignity

Charley Pride’s success was not only about records or awards. It was about how he carried himself while breaking barriers that others had built without asking him. He faced segregation, silence, and surprise, but he did not make bitterness his home. Instead, he made room for excellence.

Charley Pride showed that talent could cross lines that society tried to keep in place.

On November 11, 2020, he received the Country Music Association’s Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award in Nashville. He performed “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’” that night, and then went home. Thirty-one days later, his life ended, but his voice remained.

Charley Pride’s story is not just about being first. It is about lasting. It is about a man who kept showing up, kept singing, and kept his dignity intact in rooms that were not always ready for him. That is why his life still matters. He did not ask for the room to change before he entered it. He simply sang, and the room changed anyway.

 

Related Post

Uncategorized

ON AUGUST 8, 2017, AN 81-YEAR-OLD MAN DIED IN AN ALZHEIMER’S CARE FACILITY OUTSIDE NASHVILLE, WITH HIS FAMILY IN THE ROOM. Kim had been his wife since 1982. There were eight children between them. He had spent the first half of his working life being paid for one thing above all others: he could hear a piece of music once and never lose it. Glen Travis Campbell was born in Billstown, Arkansas, in 1936, the seventh son in a house of twelve children on a sharecropper’s land. An uncle handed him a guitar when he was four. He left school at fourteen. He never learned to read a note of music, and never needed to. In Los Angeles in the sixties he became one of the session players the industry now calls the Wrecking Crew. No charts, no sheet music, no second takes. Somebody hummed it, he played it. He played on records by Frank Sinatra, by Elvis Presley, by Merle Haggard, by the Monkees. He played on Pet Sounds. When Brian Wilson could not go out on the road, Campbell went out as a Beach Boy in his place. Then he stepped out front. “Gentle on My Mind.” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” “Wichita Lineman.” “Galveston.” A network television show. A part opposite John Wayne. “Rhinestone Cowboy.” In June 2011 he told the public he had Alzheimer’s disease. He announced a goodbye tour of three to five weeks. It ran a hundred and fifty-one shows over a year and a half, with his children in the band and the words to his own songs scrolling on a screen at the front of the stage. The last thing he ever recorded was a song he wrote about the disease. The title came from something he said offhand to his co-writer after a long day of being asked how he felt about losing his memory — that he could not see what everyone was so upset about, since he was not going to miss anybody. It won a Grammy in 2015. His daughter said afterward that he had no idea he had won it.

Uncategorized

HIS OWN SISTER ONCE ASKED WHY HE WAS SINGING “THEIR MUSIC.” YEARS LATER, CHARLEY PRIDE GAVE NASHVILLE HIS ANSWER: “IT’S MY MUSIC, TOO.” Charley Pride grew up in Sledge, Mississippi, one of eleven children in a sharecropping family. His father listened to the Grand Ole Opry on the family radio, and Charley never thought of the songs coming through it as belonging to somebody else. But even inside his own family, people understood the barriers waiting for him. “My older sister one time said, ‘Why are you singing THEIR music?’” Charley later recalled. Years afterward, country star Webb Pierce welcomed him by saying it was good to have Charley in “our music.” Charley did not argue. He simply corrected him. “Webb, it’s my music, too.” That quiet sentence explained the career that followed. Charley never asked permission to love country music, and he never accepted the idea that his voice did not belong there. He earned 29 No. 1 hits, placed 52 songs in the Top 10, and entered the Country Music Hall of Fame. Charley Pride did not borrow country music from anyone. He reminded America that it had always belonged to everyone.

Uncategorized

JIMMY WEBB SENT GLEN CAMPBELL A SONG THAT WASN’T FINISHED. HE ATTACHED A NOTE SAYING SO. CAMPBELL RECORDED IT ANYWAY — AND BOB DYLAN WOULD LATER CALL IT THE GREATEST COUNTRY SONG EVER WRITTEN. Webb had two verses and no ending. He was still humming the last part, waiting for words to come. He turned it in unfinished, with a note and a little smiley face, and figured he’d fix it later. Weeks passed. No word. When he finally ran into Campbell he said, I guess you guys didn’t like it. Campbell said, oh, we cut that. Webb told him it wasn’t done. Campbell said: well, it is now. And that’s the thing about “Wichita Lineman.” It doesn’t resolve. A man alone on a pole in the middle of nowhere, needing someone more than he wants her, still on the line — and then it just ends. No answer. No resolution. Because that kind of waiting doesn’t get one. Campbell heard that before the man who wrote it did. Out of hundreds of songs he recorded, this was the one he called his favorite. Do you think Webb ever found a third verse worth adding?

You Missed

Uncategorized

ON AUGUST 8, 2017, AN 81-YEAR-OLD MAN DIED IN AN ALZHEIMER’S CARE FACILITY OUTSIDE NASHVILLE, WITH HIS FAMILY IN THE ROOM. Kim had been his wife since 1982. There were eight children between them. He had spent the first half of his working life being paid for one thing above all others: he could hear a piece of music once and never lose it. Glen Travis Campbell was born in Billstown, Arkansas, in 1936, the seventh son in a house of twelve children on a sharecropper’s land. An uncle handed him a guitar when he was four. He left school at fourteen. He never learned to read a note of music, and never needed to. In Los Angeles in the sixties he became one of the session players the industry now calls the Wrecking Crew. No charts, no sheet music, no second takes. Somebody hummed it, he played it. He played on records by Frank Sinatra, by Elvis Presley, by Merle Haggard, by the Monkees. He played on Pet Sounds. When Brian Wilson could not go out on the road, Campbell went out as a Beach Boy in his place. Then he stepped out front. “Gentle on My Mind.” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” “Wichita Lineman.” “Galveston.” A network television show. A part opposite John Wayne. “Rhinestone Cowboy.” In June 2011 he told the public he had Alzheimer’s disease. He announced a goodbye tour of three to five weeks. It ran a hundred and fifty-one shows over a year and a half, with his children in the band and the words to his own songs scrolling on a screen at the front of the stage. The last thing he ever recorded was a song he wrote about the disease. The title came from something he said offhand to his co-writer after a long day of being asked how he felt about losing his memory — that he could not see what everyone was so upset about, since he was not going to miss anybody. It won a Grammy in 2015. His daughter said afterward that he had no idea he had won it.

Uncategorized

HIS OWN SISTER ONCE ASKED WHY HE WAS SINGING “THEIR MUSIC.” YEARS LATER, CHARLEY PRIDE GAVE NASHVILLE HIS ANSWER: “IT’S MY MUSIC, TOO.” Charley Pride grew up in Sledge, Mississippi, one of eleven children in a sharecropping family. His father listened to the Grand Ole Opry on the family radio, and Charley never thought of the songs coming through it as belonging to somebody else. But even inside his own family, people understood the barriers waiting for him. “My older sister one time said, ‘Why are you singing THEIR music?’” Charley later recalled. Years afterward, country star Webb Pierce welcomed him by saying it was good to have Charley in “our music.” Charley did not argue. He simply corrected him. “Webb, it’s my music, too.” That quiet sentence explained the career that followed. Charley never asked permission to love country music, and he never accepted the idea that his voice did not belong there. He earned 29 No. 1 hits, placed 52 songs in the Top 10, and entered the Country Music Hall of Fame. Charley Pride did not borrow country music from anyone. He reminded America that it had always belonged to everyone.

Uncategorized

ON DECEMBER 12, 2020, AN 86-YEAR-OLD MAN DIED IN A DALLAS HOSPITAL, THIRTY-ONE DAYS AFTER A ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE STOOD UP FOR HIM. Rozene had been his wife for sixty-four years. There were three grown children. He had spent most of his life being the only person in the room who looked like him, and he had never once made it anyone else’s problem. Charley Pride was born in Sledge, Mississippi, in 1934, the fourth of eleven children born to sharecroppers. He picked cotton. He bought his first guitar out of a Sears catalog for about ten dollars. Baseball came first. The Negro American League. The Memphis Red Sox. Two years in the Army. Then a smelter job in Montana, and a semipro team, and a habit of singing before games to bring people through the gate. He tried out for the majors around 1961. Baseball had integrated by then. It still didn’t take him. Country music had not integrated at all. It took him. RCA signed him in 1965 and sent his first singles to radio without a photograph. Disc jockeys played the voice. Twenty-nine number one records followed. He was the label’s best-selling artist after Elvis. In January 1967 he walked onto the Grand Ole Opry stage, the first Black performer to do it in decades, and told the crowd about his permanent tan before anyone else could say it first. On November 11, 2020, in a half-empty pandemic ballroom in Nashville, they gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award. He sang “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’.” He tested negative on the way in and negative on the way home. They handed him a prize for a whole life. He had a month of it left.

Uncategorized

JIMMY WEBB SENT GLEN CAMPBELL A SONG THAT WASN’T FINISHED. HE ATTACHED A NOTE SAYING SO. CAMPBELL RECORDED IT ANYWAY — AND BOB DYLAN WOULD LATER CALL IT THE GREATEST COUNTRY SONG EVER WRITTEN. Webb had two verses and no ending. He was still humming the last part, waiting for words to come. He turned it in unfinished, with a note and a little smiley face, and figured he’d fix it later. Weeks passed. No word. When he finally ran into Campbell he said, I guess you guys didn’t like it. Campbell said, oh, we cut that. Webb told him it wasn’t done. Campbell said: well, it is now. And that’s the thing about “Wichita Lineman.” It doesn’t resolve. A man alone on a pole in the middle of nowhere, needing someone more than he wants her, still on the line — and then it just ends. No answer. No resolution. Because that kind of waiting doesn’t get one. Campbell heard that before the man who wrote it did. Out of hundreds of songs he recorded, this was the one he called his favorite. Do you think Webb ever found a third verse worth adding?