1.
For most entertainers, there is a single experience, one defining moment, when confidence replaces the self-doubt that most of us wrestle with.
Charley Pride
2.
The tastes of country music fans are not limited to the narrow range defined by consultants and programmers and record company moguls.
Charley Pride
3.
It used to be that if you had a pretty good record, you could stop by a station in Little Rock or Atlanta and let the DJ listen to it. No way something like that can happen now.
Charley Pride
4.
The time I spent thinking about how I was better than somebody else or worrying about somebody else's attitude was time I could put to better use.
Charley Pride
5.
I try to keep my feet on the ground. Even though I appreciate the fame and adoration, I remember once I used to pick cotton, and I felt like even then I was somebody. I have the same feet, hands and heart like everyone else. I'm just also blessed with a good voice.
Charley Pride
6.
I finally came to terms with manic depression and lithium. I've taken lithium regularly for the past few years and have had no further bouts with manic depression.
Charley Pride
7.
Fans are what make a performer and I've always taken them seriously.
Charley Pride
8.
A fan will grab you and hug you and will not let go. When that happens, you wish it could be that way all over the world.
Charley Pride
9.
There only have been two people on this earth that I was nervous around: Chet Atkins and Mickey Mantle. It's because of the respect I have for them.
Charley Pride
10.
No one had ever told me that whites were supposed to sing one kind of music and blacks another - I sang what I liked in the only voice I had.
Charley Pride
11.
Fans will praise you, scold you, and offer helpful advice. Fans will also defend you.
Charley Pride
12.
I learned to tune a guitar by ear. That method has served me pretty well.
Charley Pride
13.
Chet Atkins... is probably the best guitar player who ever lived.
Charley Pride
14.
There is an intimacy about the Opry Theater that gives an entertainer a special charge.
Charley Pride
15.
I grew up not liking my father very much. I never saw him cry. But he must have. Everybody cries.
Charley Pride
16.
Early in my career I began receiving letters from a woman in the Midwest who claimed to be my mother.
Charley Pride
17.
I was always a dreamer, in childhood especially. People thought I was a little strange.
Charley Pride
18.
It was unlikely that anyone had ever heard a black person sing country music.
Charley Pride
19.
Any entertainer who tells you that the adoration of fans is not a heady experience probably never had the experience.
Charley Pride
20.
I think there's enough room in country music for everybody.
Charley Pride
21.
What we don't need in country music is divisiveness, public criticism of each other, and some arbitrary judgement of what belongs and what doesn't.
Charley Pride
22.
I'm not James Brown. I'm not Sam Cooke. I'm Charley Pride. I'm just me and that's what you got.
Charley Pride
23.
Too many religious organizations are in the business of enforcing beliefs.
Charley Pride
24.
Singing as a full-time job was not something I had given a lot of thought to and I had no clear notion of the money to be made in it.
Charley Pride
25.
How often does a guy who lives and breathes baseball meet a woman who loves the game and understands it as well as he?
Charley Pride
26.
Redd Foxx was the same gruff old codger you saw on television.
Charley Pride
27.
Mother was a talkative person, and I was a lot like her.
Charley Pride
28.
Performing is an experience, for me, that is as humbling as it is energizing.
Charley Pride
29.
If Detroit was a watershed concert for me, traveling with Willie Nelson through Texas and Louisiana was a milestone of a different sort.
Charley Pride
30.
There were no guarantees that country music, whose roots were in the South, were ready for Charley Pride.
Charley Pride
31.
I don't care what the religion is called; as far as I'm concerned, one God, the God I adhere to, is in charge of all of them.
Charley Pride
32.
Even now, when I'm asked how I'm doing, I like to reply, 'Pretty good. I've got all my fingers and both eyes.
Charley Pride
33.
No one church has all the answers or the perfect map to the Promised Land, and I prefer to work out my own faith and my own convictions in the seclusion of my own mind.
Charley Pride
34.
People pay attention to lyrics, and the race matter was delicate.
Charley Pride
35.
I always wanted to grow up fast. I longed for more than the Mississippi Delta could give.
Charley Pride
36.
In 20 years I had sold more records for RCA than any artist except Elvis Presley.
Charley Pride
37.
I loved Mississippi and do to this day. The rainbows that stretch from horizon to horizon after a summer rain are the most spectacular I have ever seen.
Charley Pride
38.
Baseball got into my blood early and I worked harder at it than anything.
Charley Pride
39.
As far back as I can remember, the radio held a special fascination for me.
Charley Pride
40.
Besides good schools, a good airport, and the Cowboys, Dallas had golf courses, and golf was fast becoming an obsession with me.
Charley Pride
41.
Flying was as necessary to my business as fiddles and footlights.
Charley Pride
42.
Until MTV, television had not been a huge influence on music. To compete with MTV, the country music moguls felt they had to appeal to the same young audience and do it the way MTV did.
Charley Pride
43.
There were very few black people in Montana but we never felt out of place.
Charley Pride
44.
I've seen people who have been coming to my shows for 25 years.
Charley Pride
45.
My brothers and sisters all sang, too, and they all have good voices.
Charley Pride
46.
A black man singing about a blond girl was potential trouble.
Charley Pride
47.
Johnny Duncan was one of the first opening acts I hired for my show, and he is the one who initiated me into astrology. I got hooked. It made a lot of sense to me.
Charley Pride
48.
I was sometimes jeered by black soldiers who wanted me to sing something besides country music.
Charley Pride
49.
A lot of celebrities relish politics and are eager to lend their names to candidates and causes. I never wanted to be a spokesman for anybody.
Charley Pride
50.
I might have become a minor celebrity but royalty checks were a long way off.
Charley Pride
