Even today, if you close your eyes and listen to any song by Charley Pride, you don’t hear Black. His rich baritone transcends race, and in some ways, it even transcends genre. On any of his hits, even ones as disparate and decades-spanning as “All I Have to Offer You Is Me,” “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone,” “Amazing Love,” “You’re My Jamaica,” and “Roll on Mississippi,” what strikes you first is his immaculate delivery. It’s a perfect blend of hard country and pop polish that owes as much to the rugged honky tonk blues of Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell as it does to the smooth urbane countrypolitan tones of Eddy Arnold and Jim Reeves.
Pride could bring you to your feet with a rousing live rendition of Hank Williams’s “Kaw-Liga” (a top-three 1969 hit), take you to church with the gospel albums “Did You Think to Pray” (which went gold the year before Aretha Franklin’s landmark “Amazing Grace” and brought Pride two more Grammys) and “Sunday Morning with Charley Pride,” and break your heart with detailed, exacting country-pop ballads of love found and lost, without even seeming to switch gears. He was a master of nearly every country subdivision, demonstrating a fluency and versatility that with rare exceptions — Dolly Parton and his longtime friend Willie Nelson — went unmatched in the genre.
He was, to be sure, an Aretha Franklin for country music, not just because of their shared race but because, like Aretha, he was a pioneer who created a new blueprint for ascending to the status of royalty in his field. In doing so, he inspired a generation of Blacks like me to never let brick walls and glass ceilings hold us back or keep us down. The dream that may seem just out of reach is actually ours for the taking.