Charley Frank Pride (born March 18, 1938) is an American country music singer. His smooth baritone voice was featured on thirty-nine number-one hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts. His greatest success came in the early- to mid-1970s, when he became the best-selling performer for RCA Records since Elvis Presley. His chart success and recordings since the late 1980s have been sporadic, but Pride continued touring successfully.

Pride is one of the few Black country musicians to have had considerable success in the largely Caucasian country music industry and the only one to be inducted into the Grand Ole Opry. In 2010, Pride became a special investor and minority owner of the Texas Rangers baseball club.

Pride was born in Sledge, Mississippi, one of eleven children of poor sharecroppers. His father intended to name him Charl Frank Pride, but owing to a clerical error on his birth certificate, his legal name is Charley Frank Pride. In his early teens, Pride began playing guitar.

Though he also loved music, one of Pride's life-long dreams was to become a professional baseball player. In 1952, he pitched for the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro American League. He pitched well, and, in 1953, he signed a contract with the Boise Yankees, the Class C farm team of the New York Yankees. During that season, an injury caused him to lose the "mustard" on his fastball, and he was sent to the Yankees' Class D team in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Later that season, while in the Negro leagues with the Louisville Clippers, he and another player (Jesse Mitchell), were traded to the Birmingham Black Barons for a team bus. "Jesse and I may have the distinction of being the only players in history to be traded for a used motor vehicle," Pride mused in his 1994 autobiography.^{[dead link]}

Jeannie Seely (born Marilyn Jeanne Seely July 6, 1940 in Titusville, Pennsylvania) is an American country music singer and Grand Ole Opry star. She is best known for her 1966 Grammy award-winning Country hit, "Don't Touch Me", which peaked at No. 2 on the country charts.

Seely has produced numerous country hits, from the 60s into the mid-70s, including duets with Jack Greene like 1969's "I Wish I Didn't Have to Miss You". Seely has befriended many country singers, including Jan Howard and Dottie West.

Seely was born in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1940. She was the youngest of four children. Growing, up Seely, along with her siblings and parents lived in a two-story farmhouse, which still exists today in her hometown. Her musical influences partially came from her parents, Leo and Irene. Leo played the banjo on the weekends and also called local square dances. Seely's mother, Irene sang with her daughter every Saturday morning while they baked bread together. She started listening to the weekly broadcast of the Grand Ole Opry at age 11. By the time she was 16, Seely appeared on a television station, "WICU" in Erie, Pennsylvania. While in high school, she was an honors student and was also a cheerleader. After she graduated high school in 1958, Seely worked in her hometown's bank. She also did night courses at America's Institute of Banking. At age 21, Seely packed up everything she owned and moved out to California. She first started working at a Beverly Hills bank, but left after a year and worked for half the money as a secretary at Liberty and Imperial Records in Hollywood, California.

Connie Smith (born Constance June Meador; August 14, 1941) is an American country music artist. Active since 1964, Smith is widely considered to be one of the genre's best female vocalists. She has earned eleven Grammy award nominations, twenty top ten Billboard country singles, and thirty one charting albums, three of which have hit number one. In 2012 Smith became the twelfth solo female vocalist and nineteenth woman to be elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Despite her success, Smith is often considered of the most underrated vocalists in country music history due to the decision not to pursue super stardom with the non-country general media market like such contemporaries as Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, and Tammy Wynette . Artists such as Parton,George Jones, and Chely Wright have cited Smith as either one of the best vocalists in the music industry or their favorite female artist.

Jerry Reed Hubbard (March 20, 1937 – September 1, 2008), known professionally as Jerry Reed, was an American country music singer, innovative guitarist, songwriter, and actor who appeared in more than a dozen films. His signature songs included "Guitar Man," "A Thing Called Love," "Alabama Wild Man," "Amos Moses", "When You're Hot, You're Hot" (which garnered a Grammy Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance), "Ko-Ko Joe", "Lord, Mr. Ford", "East Bound and Down" (the theme song for the 1977 blockbuster Smokey and the Bandit, in which Reed co-starred), "The Bird," and "She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)".

Reed was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the second child of Robert and Cynthia Hubbard. Reed's grandparents lived in Rockmart and he would visit them from time to time. He was quoted as saying as a small child, while running around strumming his guitar, "I am gonna be a star. I'm gonna go to Nashville and be a star." Reed's parents separated four months after his birth, and he and his sister spent seven years in foster homes or orphanages. Reed was reunited with his mother and stepfather in 1944. Music and impromptu performances helped ease the stressful times the new family was under.^{[citation needed]}

Mary Frances Penick (December 30, 1931 – September 19, 2004), better known as Skeeter Davis, was an American country music singer best known for crossover pop music songs of the early 1960s. She started out as part of The Davis Sisters as a teenager in the late 1940s, eventually landing on RCA Records. In the late '50s, she became a solo star. Her best-known hit was the pop classic "The End of the World" in 1963.

One of the first women to achieve major stardom in the country music field as a solo vocalist, she was an acknowledged influence on Tammy Wynette and Dolly Parton and was hailed as an "extraordinary country/pop singer" by The New York Times music critic Robert Palmer.

Davis was the first of seven children born to William and Punzie Penick, in Dry Ridge, Kentucky. Because her grandfather thought that she had a lot of energy for a young child, he nicknamed Mary Frances "Skeeter" (slang for mosquito). In 1947, the Penick family moved to Erlanger, Kentucky, where Skeeter met Betty Jack Davis and Wanda Rose Rader at Dixie Heights High School, becoming instant friends. They sang together through much of high school, and at Decoursey Baptist Church, where Wanda's father was the pastor. They formed a group known as the Davis Sisters (although they were unrelated), and started singing on Detroit radio station WJR's program Barnyard Frolics. Wanda was unable to travel, so Skeeter & B.J. began to make a name as a duet. Eventually, the duo were signed by RCA Records in 1951 (earlier demo recordings were eventually released on Fortune Records after the act's RCA success which has led to some confusion that the Davis Sisters were on the Fortune label before RCA).