Charley Pride was a sharecropper’s son, picking cotton in Sledge, Miss., when he heard Jackie Robinson broke the baseball color barrier by signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
“This is my chance to get out of the cotton fields,” Pride, then 12, told his father after hearing about Robinson. “I’m going to the big leagues; I’m going to be the greatest baseball player ever.”
Pride remembers his childhood dreams this way: “I used to sit on the porch and look up in the clouds. I wanted to be up in those clouds.”
Charley Pride would reach those heights and – like Jackie Robinson – become a racial pioneer. He was country music’s first African American superstar, and he plays The Sharon on Oct. 19 at 7 p.m.
Pride, 84, has come a long way from the cotton fields. After a bittersweet pro baseball career and some hard years scrapping by with menial jobs, this Country Music Hall of Famer has sold more than 70 million records.
Pride’s list of songs includes 52-Top 10 country hits, including “Kiss An Angel Good Morning,” “Just Between You and Me,” “All I Have to Offer You Is Me,” “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone,” “Amazing Love,” “Roll On Mississippi” and “Mountain of Love.”
Those songs put Pride on top of the country music world but his personal journey was difficult.
“I wasn’t like Jackie Robinson,” Pride said Wednesday during a telephone interview. “Jackie was specifically picked (to break the color barrier); nobody sat me down and told me that’s what I was going to do in country music.”
Pride was only 16 when he played pro ball in the Negro Leagues. In 1956, he found himself with the Memphis Red Sox and was named to the Negro American League All-Star team. That team played an exhibition series against a group of Major Leaguers that included Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Al Smith and Gene Baker. Pride also played against Chicago Cubs legend Ernie Banks.
Pride was part of the Negro League All-Star team that came up with a rare victory against the big leaguers. Pride pitched four shutout innings in that game.
“That’s the first time we beat them, and I’ll never forget it,” Pride said, noting he was making about $2 a day in meal money and about $100 a month.
After a hitch in the Army, Pride would eventually give up baseball for music. In the mid-1960s, he hooked up with producer Jack Clement. Early on, Clement asked him: ‘Who is Charley Pride? What do you want to do?’”
“I told him,” Pride said, “I want to make records. I want to sing on stage. And I want to publish my own music.”
“Wait a minute,” Clement responded, “you already have a publisher.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Pride said. “I don’t want to be just an artist. I want to be part of the business.”
Chet Atkins signed Pride to RCA Records in 1966. A year later, “Just Between You and Me” became a hit and earned Pride a Grammy Awards nomination. Pride became RCA’s best-selling artist, trailing only Elvis Presley.
He was a star but there were still barriers. Clement called him one day about a club date in Chicago.
“Jack said the club owner would like to do it but he was worried it was too early (to feature a black country singer),” Pride said.
So, Pride called the club owner himself.
“I understand, and I don’t want anything bad to happen,” Pride said before eventually convincing the club owner to give him a chance.
“OK,” the owner said but told Pride they wouldn’t announce that he was playing there.
“This first show, we had about 80 people in a club that held about a thousand,” Pride said. “The next night there were 800 people. It just kept getting bigger.”
That’s the story of Pride’s career. This year he released his 46th album, “Music In My Heart.”
“It’s funny,” Pride said. “People have a song I did 50 years ago on the cell phone and they have one I did this year.”
Some fans wonder if he can still sell a song on stage.
“I come out and do a show and I can sense some people thinking, ‘Does this guy still got it?’ They want to hear how I sound.
“I’ve been at this a long time and I know what I’m doing. By the time I’m finished with the show, people are smiling, waving and cheering. And they say, ‘This guy’s still got it,’” Pride said.
These days, the one-time barnstorming Negro League player is part of the Texas Rangers ownership group. He clearly has come a long way. And country music – like everything else in the world – has dramatically changed.
But that’s OK with Pride, who made a historic impact for African Americans in entertainment.
“We still have a ways to go,” he said.
And what about the current state of country music? Pride won’t knock it: “It is what it is – but I like mine better.”
