Charley Pride

Charley Frank Pride (March 18, 1934 – December 12, 2020) was an American country singer and baseball player. Beginning his career as a Negro league baseball player in the early-1950s, he later pursued a career in country music, becoming the genre's first black superstar.

The period of his greatest musical success was from around 1969 to 1975, when he was the top-selling artist for RCA Records, outselling even Elvis Presley and John Denver. During the peak years of his recording career (1966–1987), he had 52 top-10 hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, 30 of which made it to number one. Songs such as "All I Have to Offer You (Is Me)", "Is Anybody Goin' to San Antone", and "Kiss an Angel Good Mornin'", among others, typified the "countrypolitan" style that made him famous and became crossover-pop hits.

Pride later ventured into gospel music, releasing his first gospel album Did You Think to Pray in 1971. In 1973, he performed "The River Song" from the motion picture musical Tom Sawyer.

Pride won the Entertainer of the Year award at the Country Music Association Awards in 1971 and was awarded a Grammy for "Best Country Vocal Performance, Male" in 1972. He is one of three African-American members of the Grand Ole Opry (the others being DeFord Bailey and Darius Rucker). He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000.

Pride was born on March 18, 1934, in Sledge, Mississippi, to Tessie B. (née Stewart; 1908–1956) and Fowler MacArthur "Mack" Pride Sr. (1907–1996). He was the fourth of eleven children born into a family of sharecroppers. His father intended to name him Charl Frank Pride, but owing to a clerical error on his birth certificate, his legal name was Charley Frank Pride. Eight boys and three girls were in the family. His elder brother, Mack Pride, played Negro league baseball before entering the ministry.

When Pride was 14, his mother purchased him his first guitar and he taught himself to play. Though he loved music, one of Pride's lifelong dreams was to become a professional baseball player. In 1952, he pitched for the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro American League. In 1953, he signed a contract with the Boise Yankees, the Class C farm team of the New York Yankees. During that season, an injury caused him to lose the "mustard" on his fastball, and he was sent to the Yankees' Class D team in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Later that season, while in the Negro leagues with the Louisville Clippers, two players – Pride and Jesse Mitchell – were traded to the Birmingham Black Barons for a team bus. "Jesse and I may have the distinction of being the only players in history to be traded for a used motor vehicle," Pride mused in his 1994 autobiography.

Pride pitched for several other minor league teams, his hopes of making it to the big leagues still alive, but was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1956. After basic training, he was stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado, where he was a quartermaster and played on the Fort's baseball team. That team won the All Army Sports Championship. When discharged in 1958, he rejoined the Memphis Red Sox. He tried to return to baseball, though hindered by an injury to his throwing arm.

Pride played three games for the Missoula Timberjacks of the Pioneer League (a farm club of the Cincinnati Reds) in 1960, and had tryouts with the California Angels (1961) and the New York Mets (1962) organizations, but was not picked up by either team.