This Country Music Pioneer Sadly Passed Away – But His Devoted Wife Stood By Him For Six Decades

America tragically lost one of its dearest icons in December 2020. Charley Pride – a giant of the country music genre – passed away from COVID-19-related complications at the age of 86. The star’s wife Rozene was by his side, just as she had been throughout most of their 64 years together. And theirs was a tale of the most enduring love that began in a remarkable way.

For his part, Charley transcended racial barriers to become a music legend. During the 1960s he made history by breaking into the country music market and going on to achieve superstar status. His smooth baritone vocals and winning song formulas won him generations of fans and an iconic position as the first African-American member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.

But it wasn’t all glory for the music man from Mississippi. He came from humble beginnings as a cotton picker’s son and lived with his large family in a tumbledown shack in the tiny town of Sledge. The future star was born to Tessie Stewart Pride and Mack Pride Sr. in March 1934. Meanwhile, his father toiled in the fields to support his wife and 11 children.

The singer’s dad inspired his son’s passion for country music by playing Grand Ole Opry shows broadcast on the family radio, according to the Charley Pride official website. Then at 14, the future star purchased a Silvertone guitar and began teaching himself the songs he was hearing on the wireless.

Though Charley had to wait until he was in his 20s before he’d have his first go at breaking into the music business. In 1958 the musician recorded his first official demo at Sun Studio on 706 Union Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee. Though Charley’s song “There’s My Baby (Walkin’)” – which was a crude reworking of the Diamonds’ hit “The Stroll” – failed to make any kind of impression on record execs.

Charley moved to Montana in 1960, and soon the singer was performing at baseball games, nightclubs and honky tonks. Two years later a local DJ called Tiny Stokes introduced Charley to the country singers Red Sovine and Red Foley. The two subsequently recruited him to play at one of their shows. His renditions of “Heartaches by the Number” and “Lovesick Blues” impressed Red Sovine so much that he invited Charley stop by the offices of the company that booked his shows.

After a trip to Florida in 1963, the budding performer did just that – taking a detour home via Tennessee and stopping by Cedarwood Publishing in Nashville. By a stroke of pure good fortune he bumped into manager Jack Johnson, who just happened to be looking for an African-American country singer. Pride laid down a couple of tracks with Jack, who promised that he would help him to secure a management contract. And it was a pledge that he would ultimately keep.

Jack began working on garnering label interest in Nashville, while Charley carried on doing shows around Montana. He performed both solo and as part of a group – one of which was a progressive country music outfit called the Night Hawks. Meanwhile, Jack struggled to tout the demo that the two had made together.

In 1965 the manager introduced Charley to producer “Cowboy” Jack Clement in Nashville, and the pair cut a couple of songs together. “The Snakes Crawl at Night” and “Atlantic Coastal Line” were recorded with professional session talent, and the two Jacks joined forces to promote Charley to the record labels. But even with the backing of this power duo the Nashville labels continued to resist.

The pair struggled for another year to get a signing, before an up and coming executive at RCA Records called Chet Atkins finally decided to take a chance on the unknown singer. The gifted guitarist and songwriter then set about making Charley his protégé. Crucially, he led a promotional campaign that tackled the racial discrimination that his artist was clearly battling.

By 1967 Charley was becoming big news. His single “Just Between You and Me” took off and landed in the Top-10 Country music chart – earning the young artist his first Grammy nomination. From there, Charley’s career went supernova. He sold tens of millions of records over the following two decades and garnered over 50 Top-10 Country hits.

According to Charley’s official website, his number-one hit-single “Kiss An Angel Good Mornin’” sold over a million copies in 1971. Not only that: it also earned him the Country Music Association’s “Entertainer of the Year” award. It would become Charley’s signature song and the only one to make it into the Top 40 of the pop charts – reaching number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The awards soon started flooding in for Charley. He won the “Top Male Vocalist” accolade in two consecutive years and a Grammy for “Best Male Country Vocal Performance” in the early 1970s. His most memorable hits from that heyday era include “Is Anybody Goin’ To San Antone,” “All I Have to Offer You is Me,” “Roll on Mississippi” and “Mountain of Love.” Then in 1986 the singer left RCA Records to sign with 16th Avenue Records.

A landmark moment for Charley came in 1993, when he was officially inducted into the homestead of country music: Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry. As it turns out, the star was actually offered the prestigious opportunity decades earlier. But Charley turned it down as he didn’t want to commit to performing every weekend at the venue, which was apparently a requirement at the time.

And there were more gongs to follow. Charley nabbed the high-profile Pioneer Award for his trailblazing achievements from the Academy of Country Music in 1994. His services to the genre were also honored with an induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000. Then in 2017 the singer received the ultimate prize – a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Recording Academy, which is the official body behind the Grammys.

It’s no big surprise that Charley’s fan base extended well beyond the United States. Especially as the musician’s touring schedule took him all over the globe throughout his glittering career. But something you might not expect is his hero status among British and Irish fans. Why so? Well, according to his official website, it’s partly down to The Troubles.

The Troubles was a conflict between the Irish Unionists and Nationalists in Northern Ireland which formally ended in 1998. The latter community wanted the country to unify with the Republic of Ireland, while the former aimed to keep it within the United Kingdom. Countless shootings and bombings took place there and in Britain itself, and Northern Ireland’s capital of Belfast saw much of the violence. As a result, many international music acts began avoiding the city.

For his part, Charley agreed to play in Belfast after a little persuasion from the influential Irish concert promoter Jim Aiken. His performance at the city’s Ritz Cinema in November 1976 famously united fans from both sides of the conflict. It also created such a buzz that other artists including the Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart soon decided to perform there. And Charley’s single “Crystal Chandeliers” subsequently became a unifying anthem to fans both in the U.K. and Ireland.

While playing his part in soothing socio-political tensions, Charley was busy breaking down racial barriers, too. When he started out performing, promoters would hide the fact that he was black for fear of deterring concert-goers. According to the musicologist Charles K. Wolfe, Charley later said, “I knew I’d have to get it over with sooner or later. I told the audience, ‘Friends, I realize it’s a little unique, me coming out here – with a permanent suntan – to sing country and western to you. But that’s the way it is.’”

Later, the star would remark in his 1994 autobiography, Pride: The Charley Pride Story, “We’re not color blind yet. But we’ve advanced a few paces along the path, and I like to think I’ve contributed something to that process.” It seemed as though making music – and changing the face of it – was something that the country singer was born to do. And yet, it wasn’t always his plan.

Believe it or not, one of Charley’s dreams was actually to be a major-league baseball player. By the age of 16, it was becoming apparent that he had a talent for the sport and a powerful pitching arm. He started out playing games for the Iowa State League and later became a professional pitcher and outfielder for the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro American League.

In 1953 Charley signed a contract with the Boise Yankees – a Class C division of the New York Yankees. But a shoulder injury later that season compromised his pitching skills and resulted in him being relegated to the Yankees’ Class D team in Wisconsin. And there was more humiliation to follow. The pitcher and a plater called Jesse Mitchell were traded from the Louisville Clippers to the Birmingham Black Barons for a tour bus. In his 1994 autobiography, Charley lamented, “Jesse and I may have the distinction of being the only players in history to be traded for a used motor vehicle!”

Though it wasn’t all disappointments. In 1956 Charley was taken up again by the Memphis Red Sox. There, he pitched and won in 14 games, according to his official website. It was enough to earn a place on the Negro American League All-Star Team. Yes, Charley’s dream of competing in the big leagues seemed to be edging ever closer.

The country music star soon found himself pitted against major-league names such as Willie Mays and Hank Aaron. The latter men had formed the so-called “Willie Mays All-Stars” team, who toured the south playing exhibition games. They won almost all of them – except for one night in Victoria, Texas. Charley closed out a game with four innings of shutout ball and secured a victory for his team towards the close of the season.

Baseball had more than professional significance for Charley, though. For it was while playing a game in Memphis that he would meet the woman who would become his wife of 64 years – Rozene. A huge fan of baseball, she supported her future husband during that game and never stopped throughout their life together.

But Uncle Sam would get in the way of Charley’s baseball dream, and he was drafted into the United States Army in 1956. Nevertheless, Rozene waited for him. The couple then married later that same year while Charley was on Christmas leave from basic training. Afterwards, he was stationed at Fort Carson in Colorado, where he was predictably signed up to the regiment’s baseball team alongside a host of other talent.

That team went on to steal victory in the “All Army” sports championship tournament. But Pride’s musical talent was flourishing, too. The baseball player was becoming known for breaking into song at the barracks. And Charley was given the honor of singing at the officer’s club, which was rare for African-Americans at that time. Meanwhile, his wife Rozene stayed close by, and the couple soon welcomed their first son Kraig.

After being discharged from the army in 1958, Charley set his sights on the baseball big leagues once more and re-joined the Memphis Red Sox. He became part of the all-stars squad and played against more major-league talent including Ernie Banks and Gene Baker. Then in 1960 Charley moved to Montana to briefly play for the Missoula Timberjacks.

Though Charley wound up instead working for the Anaconda Mining Company and started playing for the East Helena Smelterites – the firm’s semi-professional team. A hopeful trial with the Los Angeles Angels beckoned in 1961, but it wasn’t to be. And so he continued with the former team – playing games around his shifts at the plant. But conditions there were tough. Charley would frequently shovel coal into a boiling hot furnace and regularly received burns from it.

According to the website Helena History, the singer’s talent was soon spotted by the Smelterites manager, who started chucking Charley a few dollars to sing before each game. His boss also paid him to sing at company picnics, while the star was still gigging locally with the Night Hawks. In 2014 Charley told the Missoulian newspaper, “I would work at the smelter, work the swing shift and then play music. I’d work 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Drive. Play Friday. Punch in. Drive. Polson. Philipsburg.”

The future star was now making good money, so he moved wife Rozene and their son to Helena with him. Here, they bought their first home together and welcomed their second son Charles “Dion” and daughter Angela at the local hospital. A failed try-out with the New York Mets in 1963 resulted in Charley abandoning his dream of playing major-league baseball. But with his music career gathering momentum, he and his family moved first moved to Great Falls, Montana, and then later to Dallas, Texas.

Rozene commented in a 1967 interview with Helena’s Independent Record newspaper that the family had experienced some racism in Montana. She alleged that they had been refused service in a restaurant and prevented from viewing a home by a realtor. But despite this, Charley’s memories of living in the state were mostly positive. He told the Last Best News website in 2014, “Montana is a very conservative state… I stood out like a neon. But once they let you in, you become a Montanan.”

Slowly but surely, the racial barriers somewhat eroded and Charley became a star who was hailed for his talent – instead of being rejected because of his skin color. Although that continued to be an issue. According to the Associated Press, he said in 1992, “They used to ask me how it feels to be the ‘first colored country singer.’ Then it was ‘first Negro country singer;’ then ‘first black country singer.’ Now I’m the ‘first African-American country singer.’ That’s about the only thing that’s changed.”

In 2008 Charley and his brother Mack “The Knife” were recognized for their largely unsung achievements in Negro American League baseball. Along with 28 other living former players, the brothers were “drafted” onto each of the 30 Major League Baseball teams. Charley was selected by the Texas Rangers, while Mack was picked up by the Colorado Rockies.

Charley’s stellar status also saw him perform the national anthem before the 1980 World Series. He would have the same honor in 2010 – accompanied on both occasions by the Del Rio High School JROTC Color Guard. Charley also performed the anthem at Super Bowl VIII that same year.

Even in his 80s, the country legend continued to make music. He was one of 30 artists in 2016 to collaborate on “Forever Country” – a mix of “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” “On the Road Again” and “I Will Always Love You” – marking 50 years of the Country Music Association Awards. In 2017 he also released his first studio album for six years: Music in My Heart.

Shortly before he died, Charley gave his final performance at the 2020 Country Music Association Awards. Poignantly, his farewell number was the signature hit “Kiss An Angel Good Mornin’.” Honoring him with the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award that night was the CMA’s chief executive Sarah Trahern. She said, “Charley Pride is the epitome of a trailblazer. Few other artists have grown country music’s rich heritage and led to the advancement of country music around the world like Charley.”

Sarah added, “[Charley’s] distinctive voice has created a timeless legacy that continues to echo through the country community today.” Indeed, his two sons have followed in their superstar dad’s musical footsteps! Both of them also performed alongside their famous dad and covered – yep, you guessed it – “Kiss An Angel Good Mornin’.”

Charley sadly passed away in December 2020 surrounded by the family who adored him. It’s clear that the musical pioneer strongly upheld the family values and ideals of love so often sung about in country music. His devoted wife Rozene was certainly no different. As another country star, Tammy Wynette famously sang: “Stand by Your Man.” And Rozene sure did.