Charley Pride

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

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

Once your name becomes well known, politicians come courting.

What we don't need in country music is divisiveness, public criticism of each other, and some arbitrary judgement of what belongs and what doesn't.

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

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.

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've tried to help a lot of young artists get started.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

It isn't reasonable to expect that everyone in the world is a country music fan. Not yet, anyway.

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.