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

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

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.

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.

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