By Russell Roberts.
Over 50 years ago the country music scene was driven by white singers, and it was also when Charley Pride's battle against racism began in his professional career. The recent advice on Twitter for Darius Rucker to leave country music to white people, reminds us of the trials, and tribulations of the now-legendary African-American country singer, who met severe blowback when he started out singing.
But dealing with racism began much earlier in his life. Born on a Mississippi cotton farm where his father worked as a sharecropper, Pride picked cotton himself for a time, and was certainly exposed to the stinging racism bred in that environment like an evil fungus.
Timing is often everything in life, and Pride had the bad timing of trying to break into the country music business in the early-mid 1960s, when Jim Crow laws and customs were still present. African-Americans in general had a tough time of it, and despite his prodigious talent, Pride was no exception. But if he’d had the bad timing of getting into country music during the 1930s, he well might have vanished without a trace.
In 1966 Pride’s record label, RCA, released his first single, “The Snakes Crawl at Night,” without publicity photos. The label feared programmers, radio station managers, and disc jockeys would not play the music of a black country singer, particularly in the South, where only “whites” sang country music.
With the release of “Just Between You and Me,” Pride caught on in a serious way with him winning a Grammy Award. Although he appeared to be on his way, many resisted the thought of an African-American country singer. Yet talent always wins out, and in 1967, Pride became the first black performer at the Grand Ole Opry in over 40 years.
Today, Pride is one of the best-selling country artists of all time, but it’s both frightening and depressing to consider how racism might have ended his career before it even began. However, if Charley Pride had not had the courage to battle against racism, we would not have had the privilege of hearing his music for all these years.
Featured Photo Credit: nashvilleonthemove.wordpress.com
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