Country music legend Charley Pride has died after complications from Covid-19. Pride, who passed away on Saturday, his website said. Rising to fame in the 1960s, while he was not the first Black singer in country music, he became one of its biggest stars during a period of division in the US.
He won three Grammy Awards, followed by a lifetime achievement award in 2017 before being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000 - the second African-American to become a member.
The son of a sharecropper on a cotton farm in Mississippi, Pride was born in 1934 and served in the army, played baseball and worked in a smelting plant before later turning to music.
Fifty-two of his songs reached the country Top 10, including the hits All I Have to Offer You (Is Me) and Kiss An Angel Good Mornin'.
Another - Crystal Chandeliers - is still popular in Northern Ireland thanks to concerts he staged there when touring was difficult due the conflict in the 1970s.
"We're not colour-blind yet, but we've advanced a few paces along the path and I like to think I've contributed something to that process," he wrote in his memoir.
He was awarded the Country Music Association's Lifetime Achievement Award in Nashville, Tennessee, in what would be his last public performance.
Fellow country star Dolly Parton, who described Pride as "one of my dearest and oldest friends, said she was "heartbroken" at the news of his death.
‘I’m so heartbroken that one of my dearest and oldest friends, Charley Pride, has passed away. It’s even worse to know that he passed away from COVID-19. What a horrible, horrible virus. Charley, we will always love you. (1/2)’
— Dolly Parton (@DollyParton).
Billy Ray Cyrus calling Pride a "gentleman... legend and true trail blazer", adding: "He took down walls and barriers meant to divide," whilst Reba McEntire wrote: "Charley Pride will always be a legend in Country music."
He was 86.
