Three must-reads on CHARLEY PRIDE, one of the most underappreciated superstars of music's last half-century, who died Saturday of Covid-19. ZAC CRAIN's 2008 psychological profile for Pride's hometown D Magazine, on the occasion of his 70th birthday, is a long and winding read that tries to explain that underappreciation while tracing the life story of an unassuming but determined country singing great who always wanted to be known for his voice and his talent rather than for the biological fact that led his story, in one way or another, every time someone other than he told it. He felt an unusually strong need, therefore, to be his own storyteller. He wasn't the first Black country star but he was far and away the biggest, and for most of his career he was the only one. Though he ran into a few roadblocks over the years at record companies and on the road, he was never treated badly, he would almost always insist, and he never felt like an outsider. His records were big sellers, radio played them and the industry gave him its biggest awards. (And he always insisted on presenting his true self. Or, as another Texas writer put it, "Charley proudly wore an Afro, not a cowboy hat.") When anyone questioned whether he belonged, he responded not with good trouble but with good humor, which worked. It always worked. DAVID CANTWELL found some of that humor "cringe-y." Cantwell's 2019 New Yorker essay on Pride is a useful counterpoint that zeroes in on a couple occasions where the singer was treated, if not badly, than not exactly with respect. Cantwell's piece draws a line between those incidents and the very real rage Pride felt earlier in life, growing up in the Jim Crow South. At one point, Cantwell writes, quoting from Pride's 1994 memoir, "he dreamed of becoming a fighter pilot, flying over his home town, and 'strafing everything in sight.'" Cantwell sees Pride as an "enigmatic figure" who "never explains how he tamed the murderous, Jim Crow-born rage that he felt as a young man." Of course, it isn't the artist's job to explain. It's the artist's job to make art, wherein listeners can hear those underlying stories if they're there to be heard, as they usually are. And Pride, writes Cantwell, was "a great American artist." Pride wasn't a songwriter. He did his storytelling with his voice, not his pen, and his voice was a strong, versatile baritone that sometimes leaned into a country twang and other times softened into a classic pop croon. Must-read #3 is RJ SMITH's straightahead catalog for the LA Times of Pride's essential recordings, through which Smith makes the case for Pride's musical genius: "Few country singers blended hard and soft modes as deftly as Pride." It was a voice that "spares unnecessary editorializing; Pride lets the picture tell his tale." The pictures are rich and detailed, sometimes sad, sometimes overflowing with love, and sometimes, maybe at their best, both. If there was one story he really wanted to tell, it may have been this: He may have looked like an outsider, but he was really an insider all along. MusicSET: "Forget Everything Else About Charley Pride and Remember This: He WAS Country Music"... Pride was a gifted baseball player who pitched and played outfield in the Negro and minor leagues. JACKIE ROBINSON was an inspiration, and in later years he would swear he never faced any of the hatred on the country music circuit that Robinson faced in baseball stadiums around the country. Being cut by both the expansion LOS ANGELES ANGELS and the hapless NEW YORK METS convinced him to concentrate on his other love, singing... He died of Covid-19, and there was some angry chatter within the country community that his appearance at the CMA AWARDS, a month and a day before he died, may have been the source. He was presented with a lifetime achievement award and performed for what turned out to be the last time at a ceremony controversially staged as a live show, with a small, socially distanced audience and a parade of live, generally mask-free performances. The CMA said Saturday that Pride was tested for Covid multiple times before and after the show and all tests were negative. The association said it would have nothing more to say, and it's likely we'll never know for sure where Pride caught the fatal disease. But if I were the CMA, I'd be losing sleep right now over the idea of putting anyone, never mind an 86-year-old man, in that situation—multiple people together onstage, some of them singing, masks treated as optional in the audience. And if I were any awards show of any kind scheduled for the next half year or so, I'd be thinking, and rethinking, long and hard... RIP also "BLUE" GENE TYRANNY, NOAH CRESHEVSKY, FRANK AMADEO, OTHELLA DALLAS, EDWARD "BUDDY" BANKS.