CHARLEY PRIDE

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

Even now, when I'm asked how I'm doing, I like to reply, 'Pretty good. I've got all my fingers and both eyes.

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.

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

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.

There are worse things than being thought a Republican.

Performing is an experience, for me, that is as humbling as it is energizing.

When I came up, there was room for the new and the old. For every new artist, an old one didn't have to be pushed out.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

The tastes of country music fans are not limited to the narrow range defined by consultants and programmers and record company moguls.

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

Too many religious organizations are in the business of enforcing beliefs.

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

There is an intimacy about the Opry Theater that gives an entertainer a special charge.

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

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.

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

I learned to tune a guitar by ear. That method has served me pretty well.

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.