Charley Pride, Black country superstar, dies at 86

Charley Pride, the son of a Mississippi sharecropper who went on to become the first Black superstar in country music, died on Saturday in hospice care in Dallas. He was 86.

His publicist, Jeremy Westby, said the cause was complications of COVID-19.

A bridge-builder who broke into country music amid the racial unrest of the 1960s, Pride was one of the most successful singers ever to work in that largely white genre, placing 52 records in the country Top 10 from 1966 to 1987.

Singles like “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’” and “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone” — among his 29 recordings to reach No. 1 on the country chart — featured a countrypolitan mix of traditional instrumentation and more uptown arrangements.

At RCA, the label for which he recorded for three decades, Pride was second only to Elvis Presley in record sales. In the process he emerged as an inspiration to generations of performers, from Black country hitmaker Darius Rucker, formerly of the rock band Hootie and the Blowfish, to white inheritors like Alan Jackson, who included a version of “Kiss an Angel” on his 1999 album, “Under the Influence.”

The reasons for Pride’s appeal were undeniable: a resonant baritone voice, an innate ear for melody, an affable demeanor and camera-friendly good looks.

In interviews, however, he sometimes played down the role that his Blackness played in his career, especially when confronted with racial prejudice.

“People thought it was going to be hard, but it wasn’t,” Pride said, talking about what it was like as a Black man to gain a foothold in country music in the ‘60s, in a 1997 interview with Nashville Scene. “I never got any flak or anything. And that’s what’s been astonishing to most reporters, especially since I came along at the height of the sit-ins and bus boycotts.”

Pride’s 1994 autobiography paints a more fraught picture of his early years in the music business. “The racial element was always there,” he wrote (with Jim Henderson) in “Pride: The Charley Pride Story.”

Charley Frank Pride was born on March 18, 1934, on a 40-acre sharecropping farm in Sledge, Mississippi, the fourth of 11 children of Tessie (Stewart) Pride and Mack Pride Sr.