Charley Pride: I’m Just Me traces the improbable journey of Charley Pride, from his humble beginnings as a sharecropper’s son on a cotton farm in segregated Sledge, Mississippi to his career as a Negro American League baseball player and his meteoric rise as a trailblazing country music superstar.
The documentary reveals how Pride’s love for music led him from the Delta to a larger, grander world. In the 1940s, radio transcended racial barriers, making it possible for Pride to grow up listening to and imitating Grand Ole Opry stars like Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff. The singer arrived in Nashville in 1963 while the city roiled with sit-ins and racial violence. But with boldness, perseverance and undeniable musical talent, he managed to parlay a series of fortuitous encounters with music industry insiders into a legacy of hit singles, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a place in the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Narrated by Grammy-nominated country singer Tanya Tucker, the film features original interviews with country music royalty, including Garth Brooks, Dolly Parton, Brad Paisley, Darius Rucker and Marty Stuart, as well as on-camera conversations between Pride and special guests, including Rozene Pride (his wife of 61 years), Willie Nelson and fellow musicians.
Following the screening, there will be a Q&A discussion with Barbara Hall and Alice Randall.
Alice Randall is a New York Times best-selling novelist, award-winning songwriter, educator, and food activist. She is the first Black woman to write a #1 country hit, Trisha Yearwood’s “XXX’s and OOO’s,” and her country songs have also been recorded by Moe Bandy, Glen Campbell, Radney Foster, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Marie Osmond, and others. A graduate of Harvard University, Randall holds the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University, where she teaches the course “Black Country,” among other offerings. Published April 9, her most recent book is My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music’s Black Past, Present, and Future, which recounts her explorations of the Black presence in country music as a fan, songwriter, music publisher, and scholar. Coinciding with the book, Oh Boy Records is releasing the album My Black Country, which collects eleven songs written by Randall as performed by Rhiannon Giddens, Miko Marks, Rissi Palmer, and other Black female artists.