He put pride in country music
IN the Public Broadcasting Service documentary I’m Just Me, aired in February, singer Charley Pride discussed his groundbreaking rise as American country music’s first major black star.
“I wanted to become the Jackie Robinson of country music,” he said.
Pride, who died at age 86 from complications due to COVID-19 in Dallas,
Texas, last Saturday, accomplished that and more. He became one of the best-selling country acts for RCA Records, was a member of the Grand Ole Opry, and in November was given the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award by the Country Music Association.
Like Robinson, Pride played in baseball’s segregated Negro League. Robinson’s talent caught the attention of several national teams and he eventually joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, thus integrating the sport in the US.
Pride did the same with country music, which had a lily-white southern audience when he began recording in the late 1950s.
He was best known for songs like Kiss An Angel Good Mornin’, which was covered by reggae singers Delroy Wilson and Ken Parker. He even tried a little reggae with the 1979 song You’re my Jamaica, which enjoyed solid radio rotation in this country.
The Mississippi native’s greatest link to Jamaica, however, was Someone Loves You Honey – a ballad he released on RCA in 1978. It was covered by a then-unknown London-born singer named J C Lodge two years later and shot up reggae charts in Jamaica and North America.
Lodge’s version was also a massive seller in The Netherlands. This year the song was covered by Shav A, another Jamaican reggae act.