Charley Pride Coming to Crockett
Special to The Messenger
CROCKETT – Country music hall of famer and living legend, Charley Pride, will be making a stop in Crockett to perform his hits in concert. The Piney Woods Fine Arts Association will present Charley Pride as the opening concert of their 2017-2018 Season.
The show will be at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 23at the Crockett Civic Center, 1100 Edmiston Dr. in Crockett. For tickets or more information call the PWFAA office at (936) 544-4276 or go to the website at www.pwfaa.org.
“We are very excited to have Charley Pride in concert and are certainly looking forward to a wonderful show for all our guests,” PWFAA Executive Director Glenn Barnhart said.
Becoming a trailblazing country music superstar was an improbable destiny for Charley Pride, especially considering his humble beginnings as a sharecropper’s son on a cotton farm in Sledge, Miss.
His unique journey to the top of the music charts includes a tumultuous detour through the world of Negro league, minor league and semi-pro baseball, as well as many long years of labor alongside the volcanic fires of a smelter. But in the end, with boldness, perseverance and undeniable musical talent, he managed to parlay a series of fortuitous encounters with Nashville insiders into an amazing legacy of hit singles and tens of millions in record sales.
What happened next is country music history. Pride quickly became country music’s first African-American superstar. Between 1967 and 1987, he amassed no fewer than 52 Top-10 Country hits and went on to sell tens of millions of records worldwide.
In 1971, Charley won two Grammy Awards related to his Gospel album “Do You think to Pray” “Best Sacred Performance, Musical (Non-Classical)” for the album, as well as “Best Gospel Performance Other Than Soul” for the single “Let Me Live.”
Later that year, his No. 1 crossover hit “Kiss An Angel Good Mornin’” sold over a million singles and helped him to win the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year award and the “Top Male Vocalist” awards of 1971 and 1972. It also brought him a “Best Male Country Vocal Performance” Grammy Award in 1972. Some of Charley’s unforgettable hits from his 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s output include “All I Have To Offer You Is Me,” “Is Anybody Goin’ To San Antone,” “Amazing Love,” “Mississippi Cotton Pickin’ Delta Town,” “Burgers And Fries,” “Roll On Mississippi” and “Mountain Of Love.” After parting ways with RCA Records in 1986, Charley spent the remainder of the decade releasing albums on the 16th Avenue Records label.
Reserved seats are on sale now.
Tickets start at $67 and are available online at www.pwfaa.org. or by calling the Piney Woods Fine Arts Assoc. office at (936) 544-4276 Mon-Fri from 9:00-2:00.
This show is sponsored by Houston County Electric Cooperative and HEB and presented in association with KIVY/KMVL, KTRE, Houston County Courier, Texas Farm & Home, Messenger and KYYK 98.3.
