Quotes from Charley Pride

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Once your name becomes well known, politicians come courting.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

There are worse things than being thought a Republican.

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.