Charley Pride, country music’s first Black 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 camerafriendly 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. His father had meant to name him Charl but a clerical error on his birth certificate officially left him with the first name Charley.

Pride initially decided to pursue a career in baseball in the Negro American League, leaving home at 16 to pitch for the Memphis Red Sox, among other organizations, and the Boise Yankees, an Idaho affiliate of the New York Yankees.

He married Ebby Rozene Cohran in 1956 and was drafted into the Army, interrupting his baseball career, which had already suffered a setback when he was injured while pitching for Boise.

After his discharge from the service two years later, Pride returned to baseball in the early ‘60s, accepting invitations to try out with the California Angels and the New York Mets but was ultimately not offered a contract by either franchise.

The Prides by this time had relocated to Helena, Montana , where Pride played both semipro baseball and music at social events for the local smelting plant where he worked.

He and his wife started a family in Helena, where Pride came to the attention of country singers Red Sovine and Red Foley. They eventually persuaded him to make a go of it in country music.