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

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

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

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

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

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

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.