BIOGRAPHY:
Charley Pride is an American icon and one of the best known Country music voices in the world.
Considering his humble beginnings on a cotton farm in Sledge, Mississippi, Pride's music career was an improbable dream that has come true. His journey to the top of the charts includes an amazing legacy of 36 #1 hit singles and over 70 million albums sold, including 31 gold albums, 4 platinum albums, and one quadruple platinum album. With his easygoing singing style and warm baritone, he continues to be one of the best-selling country artists of all-time!
At 14 years of age, Charley Pride purchased his first guitar and taught himself how to play by listening to country music on the radio. He also began emerging as a talented baseball player. At 16, he joined the Negro American baseball league, playing for the Detroit Eagles and the Memphis Red Sox for a couple of years. After a stint in the US Army, Charley moved to Helena, Montana where he worked construction jobs and continued to play minor league baseball. It was ultimately a singing engagement in a Montana bar that led to the start of his career as the first and only African-American superstar in country music.
Pride initially had a hard time gaining acceptance in Nashville. Eventually, Chet Atkins signed him to RCA Records in 1966. Charley's first couple of singles failed to jump-start his career, but the 1966 single "Just Between You and Me" caught fire, breaking into the Top 10 and launching an amazing streak of Top 10 and #1 chart singles that lasted well into the mid 1980s! It was during this period that Pride charted such hits as "All I Have to Offer You Is Me," "I'm So Afraid of Losing You Again," "Is Anybody Goin' to San Antone," "I Can't Believe That You've Stopped Loving Me," "I'd Rather Love You," "She's Too Good To Be True," "A Shoulder to Cry On," "She's Just An Old Love Turned Memory," "I'm Just Me" and "Kiss An Angel Good Mornin'." On RCA Records, Charley Pride is second in sales only to Elvis Presley as a result of this enviable string of hits.
Many of Pride's chart-topping recordings have now been elevated to "classic" status. "Kiss An Angel Good Mornin'," a crossover hit that sold over a million singles, helped Pride land the Country Music Association's Entertainer of the Year award in 1971 and the Top Male Vocalist award in 1971 and 1972. Pride has also scored many Grammy awards and nominations including one Grammy trophy for Best Gospel Performance with "Let Me Live" in the early 1970s.
In 1993, Pride accepted a long-standing invitation to join the Grand Ole Opry, 26 years after he first played there as a guest. Charley continues to perform regularly on the Opry. In 1994, he opened the Charley Pride Theatre in Branson Missouri where he performed for 4 years, doing nearly 200 shows yearly. Also in 1994, Pride was honored by the Academy Of Country Music with its prestigious Pioneer Award. The New Millennium has seen Pride being honored with his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
As an international touring artist, Charley continues to perform regularly throughout the United States and Canada, as well as in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Fiji.
After all of these years, Charley Pride is still going strong and he plans to continue recording new music in the years to come!
|
Charley Pride 
