Charlie rich biographycharlie pride

Charley pride funeral

Beginning his career as a Negro league baseball player in the earlys, he later pursued a career in country music , becoming the genre's first major black superstar. During the peak years of his recording career — , he had 52 top hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, 30 of which made it to number one. Pride later ventured into gospel music , releasing his first gospel album Did You Think to Pray in He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Pride was born on March 18, , in Sledge, Mississippi , the fourth of eleven children of poor sharecroppers.

When Pride was 14, his mother purchased him his first guitar and he taught himself to play. During that season, an injury caused him to lose the "mustard" on his fastball, and he was sent to the Yankees' Class D team in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Later that season, while in the Negro leagues with the Louisville Clippers, two players — Pride and Jesse Mitchell — were traded to the Birmingham Black Barons for a team bus.

Pride pitched for several other minor league teams, his hopes of making it to the big leagues still alive, but was drafted into the U. Army in After basic training, he was stationed at Fort Carson , Colorado, where he was a quartermaster and played on the Fort's baseball team.

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That team won the All Army Sports Championship. When discharged in , he rejoined the Memphis Red Sox. Pride played three games for the Missoula Timberjacks of the Pioneer League [ 10 ] a farm club of the Cincinnati Reds in , [ 11 ] and had tryouts with the California Angels and the New York Mets organizations, but was not picked up by either team.

When he was laid off by the Timberjacks, he moved to work construction in Helena, Montana , in He was recruited to pitch for the local semipro baseball team, the East Helena Smelterites, and the team manager helped him get a job at the local Asarco lead smelter. He also played gigs in the local area, both solo and with a band called the Night Hawks, [ 11 ] and Asarco asked him to sing at company picnics.