October 3, 2020. The Grand Ole Opry House was nearly empty, just a handful of masked staff and a few invited guests scattered across the pews like lonely prayer books. No roaring crowd, no flashbulbs, only the low hum of history in the rafters and the soft amber glow that has bathed every legend who ever stood inside that circle of oak.

Charley Pride walked out slowly, cane in one hand, the other steadying himself on the microphone stand. He was 82. The Parkinson’s had begun to steal little pieces of him, but when he opened his mouth, the years fell away like dust. He chose “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’,” the song that had made him the first Black man to top the country charts, the one that turned “colored singer” into simply “country star” for millions who’d never shaken his hand.

That night he didn’t sing it the way he did in 1971, all bright and bouncing like a new sunrise. He sang it like a man who had already seen too many sunsets. Slower. Lower. Every syllable wrapped in the kind of tenderness that only comes when you know the next breath might be borrowed.

You’ve got to kiss an angel good mornin’ And let her know you think about her when you’re gone…

His baritone cracked just a little on “gone,” not from weakness, but from weight. From memory. From every hotel room, every bus window, every time he’d kissed his wife Rozene goodbye and wondered if the road would give him back again. You could hear fifty years in that single crack.

When he reached the last chorus, he closed his eyes and leaned into the lyric like it was a porch railing at the end of a long day:

And if you get lonesome, just call me And I’ll kiss an angel good mornin’ for you…

The final note hung in the air, soft as a closing prayer. For three full seconds the room was silent, stunned by the sudden absence of that voice. Then every soul in the building rose. Not the polite Opry standing ovation you give a newcomer. The kind that starts in your chest and climbs out whether you planned it or not. Hands clapping raw. Tears falling without apology.

Charley opened his eyes, surprised, like he hadn’t expected anyone to still be listening. He gave that shy Texas grin, the one that had disarmed racists in beer joints back when they told him a Black man had no business on a country stage. He tipped an imaginary hat, the way he always did, and whispered into the mic, voice hoarse with emotion:

“Thank y’all. I love you.”

Two months later, on December 12, 2020, he was gone. COVID took him fast, quietly, the way it stole so many that cruel winter.

But on that October night, inside the circle where Hank Williams once stood drunk and brilliant, where Loretta Lynn once cried through “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” where Dolly sang “I Will Always Love You” for the first time, Charley Pride gave country music its most heartbreaking encore.

He didn’t know it was the last time. We did.

And somewhere, in the rafters above that sacred stage, the lights still remember the exact angle they fell across his face, the way they caught the last pure note of a voice that refused to see color, only soul.

Kiss an angel good mornin’, Charley. We still think about you when you’re gone. 💔🤠