Charley Pride
Charley Pride
Charley Frank Prideis an American country music singer, musician/guitarist, recording artist, performer, and business owner. His greatest musical success came in the early- to mid-1970s when he became the best-selling performer for RCA Records since Elvis Presley. During the peak years of his recording career, he garnered 52 top-ten hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, 29 of which made it to number one...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCountry Singer
Date of Birth18 March 1938
CitySledge, MS
CountryUnited States of America
What qualifies me to tell people how to act or what to think? I'm Charley Pride, country singer. Period.
I think there's enough room in country music for everybody.
The tastes of country music fans are not limited to the narrow range defined by consultants and programmers and record company moguls.
It isn't reasonable to expect that everyone in the world is a country music fan. Not yet, anyway.
I was sometimes jeered by black soldiers who wanted me to sing something besides country music.
Until MTV, television had not been a huge influence on music. To compete with MTV, the country music moguls felt they had to appeal to the same young audience and do it the way MTV did.
What we don't need in country music is divisiveness, public criticism of each other, and some arbitrary judgement of what belongs and what doesn't.
There were no guarantees that country music, whose roots were in the South, were ready for Charley Pride.
It was unlikely that anyone had ever heard a black person sing country music.
One thing I've noticed about him is he doesn't get into the social-political discussion of race. I steer clear of it myself. If I put out good music, it doesn't matter what I look like.
When I came up, there was room for the new and the old. For every new artist, an old one didn't have to be pushed out.
It's a way to showcase themselves and get involved in the community.
I realize I was more of a curiosity to the older Nashville artists than the new ones.
I might have become a minor celebrity but royalty checks were a long way off.