Charley Pride - I'm Just Me

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Charley Pride

Tanya Tucker

Rozene Pride

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Marty Stuart

Darius Rucker

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Dolly Parton

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Music: Country

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

BBC Four - Charley Pride - I'm Just Me

How a sharecropper's son became a country music superstar.

Music documentary that traces the journey of Charley Pride from sharecropper’s son to country music superstar.

Music documentary that 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 black American League baseball player and his meteoric rise as a trailblazing country music superstar. 

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. Pride arrived in Nashville in 1963 with the city embroiled in 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 as well as on-camera conversations between Pride and the programme’s other guests.

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