After a chart-topping 50-year music career that’s taken him to the Grand Ole Opry and Country Music Hall of Fame, Charley Pride doesn’t want to think about bowing out.
“I won’t retire ... I don’t want anything to do with that,” said the legendary country artist, who performs on Saturday, May 23, at Red Deer’s Centrium.
As long as fans keep turning out to hear him, Pride added he’s happy to keep smoothly singing his nostalgic hits.
The performer, who’s actually 81 although his biography states 77, said, “People tell me I’m singing better now than I’ve ever sang. ... To me, there’s no work to it. It’s so stimulating and enjoyable.”
His crowd-pleasing tunes include Kiss An Angel Good Mornin’, Is Anyone Goin’ to San Antone, Just Between You and Me, the Oscar-nominated All His Children tune from the 1970 Paul Newman film Sometimes a Great Notion, and many others.
Although his country-pop success was greatest in the mid-’70s, audiences still are packing concert halls to hear him perform, from Nashville to Newfoundland, Birmingham to Belfast.
Pride is particularly popular in Ireland due to his rendition of Crystal Chandelier. He was told “that song is like a national anthem over there.” And his spring tour of 14 cities in the U.K. takes this into consideration, featuring no fewer than nine stops in Ireland. Pride is planning to tackle Canada in small sections upon his return — Alberta and Saskatchewan first, then the East Coast and Ontario. “It’s the first time in my career that I’m doing two international tours in the same year.”
The Mississippi native retains a soft spot for Canada, recalling the reception he once got in Newfoundland (“you notice I didn’t say NewFOUNDland,” he states, obviously pleased with his correct pronunciation). When he took the stage in Stevenville, “there was applause, applause. ... It was like a revival,” recalled the singer, with audience members passing gifts up to him on stage.
As devoted as his fans have been to Pride, he’s sent love right back at them.
One time he was preparing for a concert in Nottingham, England, when a letter from a local woman arrived, requesting a song that he doesn’t normally sing.
Something about the message touched Pride. He asked his staff to track down the song’s lyrics and a recording he could listen to. He surprised the woman in the audience by singing her request. “I told (the crowd), ‘I got a letter from a lady, is she here tonight?’ She screamed ‘Yay!’ I said, ‘I don’t usually do this kind of thing. If I did it all the time I’d never get the tour done. ... But there was something about this letter that stood out for me. ...’ ”
Pride began playing music professionally after his baseball career in the Negro American League was aborted by a two-year stint in the army.
His age discrepancy goes back to his days as a professional athlete. Pride, one of 11 children born to sharecropper parents, revealed he exchanged birth years with a brother who was four years younger and already dying of an illness.
Pride said he told this brother, “‘When it comes to baseball and singing, you want to stay as young as you can,’ and (his brother) responded, ‘I have no problem with it. Chop as much as you can!’”
After leaving the army, it became clear Pride’s pitching arm wasn’t going to get him into the big leagues, so he began pursuing singing in 1958.
In 1965 he was signed by star-making record producer Chet Atkins to the RCA Victor label.
Since country music was an almost solely white industry, no pictures of Pride were distributed for a couple of years. But when his third single, Just Between You and Me, went to No. 9 on the charts, leading to a 1967 Grammy nomination, Pride became the first black performer to appear at the Grand Ole Opry since harmonica player DeFord Bailey played there in 1941.
The singer has stated that race stopped being an issue once the hits started coming.
And between 1969 and 1971, he produced eight singles that reach No. 1 on the U.S. Country Hit Parade: All I Have to Offer You (Is Me), (I’m So) Afraid of Losing You Again, I Can’t Believe That You’ve Stopped Loving Me, I’d Rather Love You, Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone, Wonder Could I live There Anymore? I’m Just Me and Kiss An Angel Good Mornin’.
The latter was a million-selling, pop-country crossover hit that became Pride’s signature tune and helped him land three Country Music Association awards.
He continued producing hits right through the 1970s and early ’80s. But he found even longer-lasting success in his 58-year marriage to his wife Rozene.
They have three children, and Pride’s concerts are often family affairs.
His lead guitar-playing son, Dion, accompanied him on his last tour of Canada. This time, he brings the youngest of his eight brothers, Stephen, who will sing backup.
“He sings so good ... and I’m not saying that because he’s my brother, but because it’s a fact.” If Stephen had gotten into singing at a younger age, who knows what might have happened, questions Pride.
He’s heard people say, “he might have been as famous as you.”
Tickets for the 2 p.m. show are $70 to $80 from Ticketmaster.
lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com