Charley Pride
No one is more deserving of his last name. Charley Pride worked his way up from a cotton-chopping childhood to multimillionaire status and a history-making niche as the first (and, so far, only) African American superstar in country music. But Pride's career was never really about race; his success sprang from a combination of talent, determination, and pure likability. "The color issue was always there," he once noted, "hanging around with the unpleasant odor of an old wet dog," but he ultimately won over the genre' s overwhelmingly white audience by cracking jokes about his "permanent tan" and by taking to heart his mother's early advice: "You've got a lot you're going to have to do, and you can't do it carrying a load of resentment."He was born on March 18, 1938, in Sledge, Mississippi, one of eleven children of sharecroppers on a cotton farm. Despite his born-to-the-blues beginning, he always favored the sounds of Roy Acuff, Bill Monroe, and Ernest Tubb.
A high school dropout, at age fifteen he tried out for the Negro American League and played with such teams as the Memphis Red Sox and the Birmingham Black Barons. He still loves the game; he regularly shows up for the Texas Rangers' spring training in Dallas, where he moved in 1969.
After a season with the Missoula Timberjacks, he stayed in Montana, working at a smelter by day and singing in local bars at night.
In 1963, after trying out unsuccessfully for both the Los Angeles Angels and the New York Mets, Pride gambled on a singing career. He signed with RCA in 1965 and the next year released "The Snakes Crawl at Night." Only when his third record, "Just Between You and Me," made it into the country Top Ten did RCA acknowledge publicly that Pride was black.
In 1969 "All I Have to Offer You (Is Me)" became the first of Pride's 36 number one hits. The biggest was "Kiss an Angel Good Morning," a million-seller that topped both the country and pop charts. Pride sold more records for RCA than anyone but Elvis Presley.
In 1980, while flying home in his private jet, Pride survived a midair collision that killed the two men in the other plane. 
No one is more deserving of his last name. Charley Pride worked his way up from a cotton-chopping childhood to multimillionaire status and a history-making niche as the first (and, so far, only) African American superstar in country music. But Pride's career was never really about race; his success sprang from a combination of talent, determination, and pure likability. "The color issue was always there," he once noted, "hanging around with the unpleasant odor of an old wet dog," but he ultimately won over the genre' s overwhelmingly white audience by cracking jokes about his "permanent tan" and by taking to heart his mother's early advice: "You've got a lot you're going to have to do, and you can't do it carrying a load of resentment."He was born on March 18, 1938, in Sledge, Mississippi, one of eleven children of sharecroppers on a cotton farm. Despite his born-to-the-blues beginning, he always favored the sounds of Roy Acuff, Bill Monroe, and Ernest Tubb.
A high school dropout, at age fifteen he tried out for the Negro American League and played with such teams as the Memphis Red Sox and the Birmingham Black Barons. He still loves the game; he regularly shows up for the Texas Rangers' spring training in Dallas, where he moved in 1969.
After a season with the Missoula Timberjacks, he stayed in Montana, working at a smelter by day and singing in local bars at night.
In 1963, after trying out unsuccessfully for both the Los Angeles Angels and the New York Mets, Pride gambled on a singing career. He signed with RCA in 1965 and the next year released "The Snakes Crawl at Night." Only when his third record, "Just Between You and Me," made it into the country Top Ten did RCA acknowledge publicly that Pride was black.
In 1969 "All I Have to Offer You (Is Me)" became the first of Pride's 36 number one hits. The biggest was "Kiss an Angel Good Morning," a million-seller that topped both the country and pop charts. Pride sold more records for RCA than anyone but Elvis Presley.
In 1980, while flying home in his private jet, Pride survived a midair collision that killed the two men in the other plane.
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