“Sometimes, when you lose your way, you find yourself.”     Mandy Hale

 1968 – Nashville, Tennessee: The crowd fell deathly silent when 27-year-old Charley Pride walked onstage. They stared at the singer. Charley tipped his hat, “Ladies and gentlemen, I realize it’s kind of unique for me to come out on this country music show stage wearing this permanent tan.” He smiled, and there was laughter, which was followed by small applause as the crowd relaxed.

When Charley sang his soon-to-be-hit single, “Kiss an Angel Good Morning,” which was making its way up the country charts toward No. 1, he received a warm applause. The crowd didn’t care if he was black, white, or green. They liked his singing.

In 1934, Charley was born in the small town of Sledge in the Mississippi Delta, one of 11 children to poor sharecroppers. He grew up working alongside his parents, picking cotton. On Saturday nights, he listened with the family to the Grand Ole Opry carried on the radio from Nashville and dreamed of being a country singer. At 14, Charley saved up and ordered his first guitar from the Sears & Roebuck catalog. He taught himself to play the $12 guitar.

He loved country music, but when Jackie Robinson broke the Major League Baseball color barrier in 1947, Charley wanted to be a professional baseball player. He hoped baseball would be his ticket out of the cotton fields. He left home at age 16 to pitch for the Memphis Red Sox, a team in the Negro American League.

After playing for the Red Sox, he pitched for the Louisville Clippers before he and a teammate were traded to the Birmingham Black Barons for a team bus. His teammates joked that they were the only two players in Negro League history to be traded for an old bus.

A hard-throwing pitcher, Charley signed a contract with the New York Yankees to play for their C League team in Boise, Idaho. But after injuring his arm, he was sent down to the D League team at Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. From that point, Charley pitched for several other minor league teams while holding on to his baseball dream.

In 1961, Charley went to spring training camp with the Los Angeles Angels but was cut from the roster. Manager Fred Haney’s feedback was short and to the point, “You don’t have a big-league arm.” They gave Charley a bus ticket home and a tuna fish sandwich in a brown paper bag. At 25, he realized he would never be another Jackie Robinson.

.Charley had honed his guitar and singing skills in the back seat of the team bus, his assigned seat, during long rides between minor league ballparks. He was good. Players kidded that he was a better singer than pitcher and encouraged him to give country music a try. Charley reminded them there was one problem: there were no African American country singers in Nashville. Well, be the Jackie Robinson of country music, they challenged him.

With nothing to lose, Charley went to Nashville. In 1965, after being turned down by several record labels, he caught the ear of guitar legend and RCA executive Chet Atkins, who signed him to a record contract. Atkins ensured there were no pictures of Charley on his singles releases, which went to radio stations nationwide. He instructed the radio stations, “Don’t show his face until America falls in love with his voice.” It didn’t take long.

 Charley’s third single went to No. 9 on the country music charts. Within two years, he had seven songs in the top 10. In 1971, “Kiss an Angel Good Morning” was a million-seller. Six years after giving up baseball, Charley Pride was voted Country Music Entertainer of the Year. On May 1, 1993, he became the first African American to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry, and in October 2000 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Charley Pride’s legacy includes 36 number one songs, 31 gold albums, four platinum albums, and one quadruple platinum seller. He is one of the best-selling country music artists of all time, having sold more than 70 million records.

Charley never reached his dream of playing in the big leagues, but in 2010 he bought a small ownership stake in the Texas Rangers baseball team, where he frequently sang the national anthem before games. In 2020, at age 86, Charley was still performing with his band when he succumbed to complications from the COVID-19 virus. When Charley Pride gave up his boyhood dream, he found his destiny.