Charley Pride Quotes & Sayings

What qualifies me to tell people how to act or what to think? I'm Charley Pride, country singer. Period. — Charley Pride

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

I realize I was more of a curiosity to the older Nashville artists than the new ones. — Charley Pride

Too many religious organizations are in the business of enforcing beliefs. — Charley Pride

I always wanted to grow up fast. I longed for more than the Mississippi Delta could give. — Charley Pride

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

I think there's enough room in country music for everybody. — Charley Pride

I learned to tune a guitar by ear. That method has served me pretty well. — Charley Pride

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

Fans will praise you, scold you, and offer helpful advice. Fans will also defend you. — Charley Pride

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

After 14 months of military service, I had a wife, a child, half an apartment, no car, and no job. — Charley Pride

I began playing Branson during the 1992 season and was a little amazed. There were about 30 celebrity theatres there and more are being added all the time. — Charley Pride

I might have become a minor celebrity but royalty checks were a long way off. — Charley Pride

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

Once your name becomes well known, politicians come courting. — Charley Pride

Not only are three-putt greens probable, at times they are an achievment. — Charley Pride

Baseball got into my blood early and I worked harder at it than anything. — Charley Pride

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

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

I believe it is possible to tell what sign some people were born under by watching their eyes, watching how they walk, how they talk. — Charley Pride

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

It was unlikely that anyone had ever heard a black person sing country music. — Charley Pride

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

A black man singing about a blond girl was potential trouble. — Charley Pride

My brothers and sisters all sang, too, and they all have good voices. — Charley Pride

Mother was a talkative person, and I was a lot like her. — Charley Pride

Chet Atkins ... is probably the best guitar player who ever lived. — Charley Pride

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

As far back as I can remember, the radio held a special fascination for me. — Charley Pride

When I came up, there was room for the new and the old. For every new artist, an old one didn't have to be pushed out. — Charley Pride

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

I was always a dreamer, in childhood especially. People thought I was a little strange. — Charley Pride

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

The tastes of country music fans are not limited to the narrow range defined by consultants and programmers and record company moguls. — Charley Pride

Besides good schools, a good airport, and the Cowboys, Dallas had golf courses, and golf was fast becoming an obsession with me. — Charley Pride

Fans are what make a performer and I've always taken them seriously. — Charley Pride

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

Performing is an experience, for me, that is as humbling as it is energizing. — Charley Pride

I've tried to help a lot of young artists get started. — Charley Pride

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

I was sometimes jeered by black soldiers who wanted me to sing something besides country music. — Charley Pride

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

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

There is an intimacy about the Opry Theater that gives an entertainer a special charge. — Charley Pride

Any entertainer who tells you that the adoration of fans is not a heady experience probably never had the experience. — Charley Pride

I grew up not liking my father very much. I never saw him cry. But he must have. Everybody cries. — Charley Pride

People pay attention to lyrics, and the race matter was delicate. — Charley Pride

In 20 years I had sold more records for RCA than any artist except Elvis Presley. — Charley Pride

Early in my career I began receiving letters from a woman in the Midwest who claimed to be my mother. — Charley Pride

A woman went so far as to hire private detectives to contact me to help bring her out of what she called a hypnotic trance. — Charley Pride

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

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

Flying was as necessary to my business as fiddles and footlights. — Charley Pride

There were very few black people in Montana but we never felt out of place. — Charley Pride

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

Redd Foxx was the same gruff old codger you saw on television. — Charley Pride

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

There were no guarantees that country music, whose roots were in the South, were ready for Charley Pride. — Charley Pride

It isn't reasonable to expect that everyone in the world is a country music fan. Not yet, anyway. — Charley Pride

I've seen people who have been coming to my shows for 25 years. — Charley Pride