Charley Pride couldn’t make the majors in baseball, so he did something even more improbable—he became the first black superstar in country music. He trailblazed his way to a fabulous career and died December 12.
A sharecropper’s son from Mississippi, Pride became one of the first Black men to become a major star in genre where most of the biggest hitmakers are white. Rising to prominence in the 1960s and ’70s, Pride recorded dozens of songs that topped the country music charts, including “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin'” and “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone.”