Honoring Charley Pride - From Cooperstown to Nashville

As we prepare to welcome Dion Pride to The Wood Theater in Glens Falls, NY on Sunday, October 19, 2025 to honor his father, today we put the spotlight on Charley Pride.  Charley is a legendary voice in Country Music and a groundbreaking artist that overcame obstacles in the world, at the time, to beat the odds on his way to become a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Red Sovine and Red Foley encouraged Charley to make the move to Nashville, after watching him perform in Montana. Prior to that, Charley had aspirations of becoming a professional baseball player.  After a stint in the Negro American League with the Memphis Red Sox and The Boise Yankees an injury forced him back to his next love, Country Music.

Producer Cowboy Jack Clement worked with Charley and convinced RCA Records Executive Chet Atkins to sign Charley, despite knowing that an African American artist could be quite controversial in the Country Music market.  A plan was developed to let Pride’s music impress the Country Music audience without judgement of his look by releasing his music with no publicity photos.  

Charley’s music earned him the love and support of the industry and fans alike - claiming Country Music’s Top Prize in 1971 as CMA Entertainer of the Year! Along the way, picking up the 1971 and 72 CMA Male Vocalist Award, racking up 29 Number One records and becoming one of RCA’s best selling artists. Whenever discrimination became a part of the conversation, Pride turned to silence and humor and overshadowed the controversial topic with quality music and talent. Hit after hit Charley gained fan after fan and became one of the most popular and respected entertainers in music, period.

As Red Foley and Red Sovine helped him launch a career, Pride ‘paid it forward’ by assisting Janie Fricke, Dave & Sugar, Neal McCoy and Ronnie Milsap take a step forward into the spotlight.  

In the end, Pride saw both of his dreams come true- he lived out a baseball career that led to owning the Texas Rangers and performing the National Anthem at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY for the 2006 induction ceremony. Furthermore, having one of the most successful careers in Country Music that any artist could ever dream of.

Charley Pride Fun Facts

• Pride was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 1993, seven years before his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
• According to The Country Music Hall of Fame: Pride’s first single, “Snakes Crawl at Night,” was released in January 1966. RCA kept Pride’s race secret from country radio disc jockeys until the third single, “Just Between You and Me,” climbed into the country Top Ten. Seeing the cover of his gold-selling first album, Country Charley Pride, was the first time many fans discovered that he was Black.
• At sixteen, Pride left Mississippi to play baseball in the Negro American League. He was enamored of Jackie Robinson, who broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947.
• According to the National Baseball Hall of Fame: According to Pride, while playing ball with Memphis he was being paid $100 a month and $2 a day meal money. And was once traded for a bus- “I got away from the Red Sox and was then signed by the manager with a team called the Louisville Clippers,” he said. “Two of us were sold to the Birmingham Black Barons so the Clippers could pay for a bus to travel in.”
• Charley performed ‘All His Children’ in the 1971 film ‘Sometimes A Great Notion’.  The song received an Oscar nomination in 1972, as written by Henry Mancini, Alan and Marilyn Bergman.
• Performed the National Anthem at the 1974 Super Bowl.
• In November 2020 he received the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award at the CMA Awards. Shortly after, in December 2020, he passed of Covid 19, at the age of 86.
• The subject of the PBS documentary ‘I’m Just Me’.

Check out our tributes to Kenny Rogers, Tom Wopat and Kathy Mattea