Charley Pride Quotes

Fans are what make a performer and I’ve always taken them seriously.

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

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

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

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

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

For most entertainers, there is a single experience, one defining moment, when confidence replaces the self-doubt that most of us wrestle with.

If Detroit was a watershed concert for me, traveling with Willie Nelson through Texas and Louisiana was a milestone of a different sort.

There are worse things than being thought a Republican.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

I’ve tried to help a lot of young artists get started.

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.

Once your name becomes well known, politicians come courting.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I’m not James Brown. I’m not Sam Cooke. I’m Charley Pride. I’m just me and that’s what you got.

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