HE LIVED HIS LIFE IN MUSIC
Charley Pride used the breadth of his voice to sing songs from the depth of his being
In 1966, when listeners first heard Charley Pride's voice, Martin Luther King Jr. was still alive, human beings had yet to set foot on the surface of the moon and the country music wafting from radios ran the board from love songs that ended happily ever after to cheating songs that ended in cold blood.
Pride had recorded his first single a year earlier — a captivating revenge ballad written by Mel Tillis and Fred Burch titled The Snakes Crawl at Night. The song tells the tale of a soon-tobe condemned man who, after catching his “loving spouse” being unfaithful, promptly ends the affair with two bullets.
Pride obviously was not telling his own story, but his story was still in there. That's how country music — and any kind of acting, stage or screen — works. The human imagination draws on the human experience, and in a transformative moment, who the singer is allows them to become who they are not. Pride had not committed any crimes of passion, but the breadth of his voice proves that he still knows something about hurt, betrayal, fury and regret. You could know him through his music, regardless of whose story he was telling.
And if you heard Pride on the radio back in 1966, you probably did not know he was Black. At the start of his career, RCA Records made no mention of his race and refrained from circulating his publicity photo. But today, more than half a century later, Pride — who died on Saturday at age 86 — is widely celebrated as a boundary-breaker, as well as one of country music's most enduring figures. Sadly, he remains a rarity, too. The Mississippi native may have kicked open a heavy door decades ago, but it seems that only in recent years has the Nashville establishment allowed more than a few Black singers — Darius Rucker, Mickey Guyton, Jimmie Allen, among others — to walk through the doorway at once.
“I was a novelty, but I never allowed myself to feel out of place,” Pride wrote in his 1994 memoir. “Unless someone else brought it up — that I was different — I tried not to think about it much.” Instead, Pride seemed to focus his attention within himself, using the breadth of his handsome voice to reveal the depth of his condition.
And what an extraordinary life he had already lived. Before moving to Nashville, Tenn., in the early '60s, Pride was working for a mining company in Montana, performing at local honky tonks and pitching for a semi-professional baseball team.
By 1971, he was a certified hitmaker with a career-defining tune in his pocket: Kiss an Angel Good Mornin,' an unhurried song that offers the secret to a happy marriage.
“Kiss an angel good morning,” Pride sings on the refrain, “and let her know you think about her when you're gone.” Got that? Show gratitude when you're together, feel gratitude when you're apart. Simple, useful, durable. It's the type of song you can use on a daily basis for the rest of your life.
In November, the Country Music Association finally decided it was time to show Pride some gratitude, so it invited him to the 54th annual CMA Awards to receive a prize for lifetime achievement (many years overdue), and to sing Kiss an Angel Good Mornin' to an indoor gathering of industry-folk, most of whom were not wearing masks. The event reportedly met protocols, but if you watched Pride performing Angel on the national telecast, it was difficult not to see an elderly man being put in danger. Thirty-one days later, Pride died in Dallas of complications from COVID-19.
“Everyone affiliated with the CMA Awards followed strict testing protocols outlined by the city health department and unions,” the Country Music Association wrote in a statement over the weekend. “All of us in the country music community are heartbroken by Charley's passing. Out of respect for his family during their grieving period, we will not be commenting on this further.”
For the rest of us, the best way to grieve Pride's incredible life is to listen to his incredible songs. Some are about angels. Others are about snakes.