Courtesy of Charley Pride
Charley Pride, left, played with a band called the Night Hawks in the 1960s, when he lived in Helena,
Baseball brought Charley Pride to Montana. This week, music is bringing him back.
The country-music legend will be the closing act on Sunday for the four-day Red Ants Pants Music Festival in White Sulphur Springs.
“We spent 7½ years in Helena, and then 2½ years in Great Falls,” Pride said in a recent interview. “It was about a month short of a total of 10 years in Montana. I believe it was from April of 1960 to when we left in 1969. My two youngest were born up there. I’m blessed with a good memory, going back 50 years.”
Pride was born on March 18, 1938, one of 11 children, on a sharecropping cotton farm, in Sledge, Miss.
When he was 14, Pride bought a guitar from a Sears Roebuck catalog and then taught himself the riffs he heard on country music radio.
Music, however, took a back seat to his dream of becoming a professional baseball player.
In 1952, Pride pitched for the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro American League. A year later, he signed a contract with the Boise Yankees, the Class C farm team of the New York Yankees. Pride pitched for several other minor league teams in the Negro Leagues throughout the mid-1950s, before serving two years in the U.S. Army.
After his discharge, Pride returned to baseball. But in 1960, after just three games with the Missoula Timberjacks of the Pioneer League, he was released.
Dejected, Pride followed a tip that there were a couple of semi-pro teams in Helena. He moved there and immediately found work in construction.
“We put down sidewalks and things like that,” Pride said. “I helped a man named Oscar Jones. That was my first job.”
Within days of his arrival, postmaster and baseball manager Kes Rigler showed up at Pride’s YMCA room and offered him a chance to play for the East Helena Smelterites. He also offered him a job at the Asarco smelter.
Pride was a pitcher and outfielder for the Smelterites and batted a state Copper League high .444 in his first season.
Realizing that Helena could turn into a long-term residence, Pride made arrangements for his wife and young son to join him. In 1956, he had married Rozene Cohran.
Charley and Rozene lived in Helena from 1960 to 1967. They first rented an apartment on Fifth Street and then at 825 Madison Ave. Rozene worked as a technician at the Hawkins-Lindstrom Clinic in Helena.
At 76, Pride’s memories of the dust and danger of the smelter linger.
“I would unload the cars, and I’d send the coal up to feed down into the furnace,” Pride said. “It was 2,400 degrees. It would get the nickel and gold out of the slag, and process the zinc out of it. My job was to keep the mouth of the furnace open, so it could breathe.
Charley Pride
An old poster for a Charley Pride show.
“When you were done tapping the slag out of the furnace, you would take it to the hill and dump it. You wore glasses, and it would fry your skin. You would still get just a little bit on you. It would hit you on the arm, or up above the glove.”
While living in Helena, Pride earned tryouts for the California Angels (1961) and New York Mets (1965), but they declined to sign him.
With the prospect of baseball fading, Pride turned to playing more music, performing in local bars and entertaining at Asarco picnics on McClellan Creek.
“I would work at the smelter, work the swing shift and then play music,” he said. “I’d work 11-7. Drive. Play Friday. Punch in. Drive. Polson. Philipsburg.”
After work, Pride played at various saloons and clubs, frequently solo and other times as part of a four-piece combination called the Night Hawks.
“The Night Hawks lasted until I started singing on my own,” Pride said. “Everything segued into the record and all that. We always had a good crowd. My waistline then was a 32, but I wouldn’t be able to get into them outfits now. I wasn’t too good of a guitar player, but I always could sing. I still don’t pick worth a hoot.”
The Prides settled at 638 Peosta, a few blocks west of Carroll College. Two of Pride’s three children were born while they lived in that house. His oldest son was born in Colorado when Pride was in the Army.
A son, Dion, was born on March 23, 1962, followed by Angela on April 18, 1965. Both were born at St. Peter’s Hospital.
Pride looks back fondly on that first house.
“We paid 7,500 bucks for it back in those days,” he said. “We loved it. I never forget it. I hope it never goes away. That was one of the most proud moments of my life.”
“I always hear a rumor that there was no photograph because I was black,” Pride said. “But that’s not true. My biggest problem was that promoters were afraid to bring me in. But people didn’t care if I was pink. RCA signed me, and all of the bigwigs, they knew I was colored, but unanimously, they decided that we are still going to sign him. They decided to put the record out and let it speak for itself.”
“Just Between You and Me,” released at the end of 1966, began a streak of successful singles that eventually led Pride into the County Music Hall of Fame. Only Elvis Presley sold more records for RCA.
In the mid-1960s, Pride’s engagements and bookings flourished.
“I started recording in Helena, but I couldn’t get to a plane fast enough,” he said. “I needed a place to fly to and from my dates, so we moved to Great Falls. In Great Falls, I still sang. I got a job on 10th Avenue South at a club, and put a band together.”
Before he moved to Great Falls, Pride left the Asarco smelter on amicable terms.
“I was there for five years,” he said. “I had taken all of the leave of absence I could take to sing. The superintendant said, ‘until you are 45, you have job here. You are leaving the right way.’”
Charley Pride
A more recent photo of Pride in concert.
In Great Falls, Pride befriended a businessman and native Texan named Louis Allen “Al” Donohue — who is often credited with giving Pride his start. Donohue was the majority owner of the Heritage Inn and the Budget Inn and co-owned KMON and KNUW radio stations.
“We became very good friends,” Pride said. “He was the very first one to play my record in Montana, and we were friends up until the end.”
Reflecting on the 1960s, Pride remembers only the good, the formative days and friendships, the hard work and hope of tomorrow.
“Montana is a very conservative state,” said Pride. “I stood out like a neon. But once they let you in, you become a Montanan. When the rumor was that I was leaving. They kept saying, ‘we will let you in, you can’t leave.’
“We never did go fishing, hiking, or hunting,” Pride continued. “We did go out to Canyon Ferry sometimes and hang out. My wife bowled with a lot of different people there. There are some who probably remember us.”
Occasionally, Pride drops in on his old town and residence. When the UBC store in Helena was built in 1982, he attended the grand opening. He took photos of the house in 2005.
Pride said he and his wife also returned a few years ago to Great Falls, and while looking at their former rental house, they bumped into the present owner.
“We pulled up and there was the fellow who was living there now, he was getting ready to back out,” Pride said. “We didn’t move, so he would have to get out and say something. I said, ‘I want my house back,’ and laughed. He took us through the house again.”
Pride lives in Dallas now, where he is involved in theater, banking and real estate. He’s also a part owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team. He’s feeling good these days.
“I had a few operations on my right vocal cord,” he said. “But I’m pretty well in good shape. I just did my blood pressure. I’ve got a 29-year-old heartbeat. And the fans say I’m singing better now than ever.”
All the years and all the miles haven’t dimmed Pride’s recollections of Montana.
“I will always think of that house on Peosta when I think of your state,” Pride said. “That was our little darling.”
Brian D’Ambrosio is a freelance writer who works with the Montana Film Office.
