When country music Hall of Famer Charley Pride died at the age of 86 due to COVID-19 complications, no one in the Roanoke Valley felt that gut punch more than Larry LeGrande.
“We talked on the phone in early December before he passed,” said LeGrande. “I know the good Lord directed him to call me and I could tell he was struggling.”
LeGrande, 81, and Pride began their friendship in 1957 when both men were baseball players for the Memphis Red Sox. They made it to the Negro Leagues from humble farming backgrounds and against all odds.
“I was his backup catcher, and he had an amazing knuckleball,” said LeGrande. “Charley was a great person and he beat all-world odds to accomplish what he did in country music as a Black man.”
LeGrande’s successful journey from the all-Black Carver School in Salem to professional baseball is just an incredible story in its own way.
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“Sometimes I can’t imagine how the good Lord made a way for a little country boy like me,” said LeGrande. “To do what I did without even having a high school team to play for…Lord have mercy.”
Growing up in the Pinkard Court area of Roanoke County on Route 220 South where the Home Depot now sits, LeGrande developed what would eventually be recognized as one of the strongest and most accurate throwing arms in the Negro Leagues. He developed that strength by digging fence post holes and tending to the pigs and chickens on the family farm.
“When Jackie Robinson broke in with the Dodgers in 1947, I remember listening to the games on the radio on our front porch,” he said. “I wanted to play Little League baseball, but that was for the white kids back then, so I played in the bushes and the weeds.”
And play he did. In the spring of 1957, the Birmingham Black Barons and Memphis Red Sox squared off in an exhibition game at the former Municipal Field in Salem. While the Red Sox were eating before the game at the old Mae’s Inn, the restaurant’s manager told some of the team members that they should check out this young local kid named Larry LeGrande.
“That night they invited me to a tryout in Memphis,” said LeGrande.
The only problem with this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was that LeGrande was right in the middle of his final semester of high school at Carver. The principal, Chauncey Harmon, was aware of LeGrande’s potential and understood that a young Black man in 1957 may never get another chance like this one. So, he excused LeGrande from school for three weeks with the understanding that he would keep up with his class work and learn his mandatory part for the senior play.
“We killed two chickens on our farm, my mom cooked them, and I carried them with me in a brown paper bag on that 600-mile train trip to Memphis,” he said. “It took two days to get there.”
In Memphis, he was one of the youngest and smallest men in camp, as 60-plus players tried to earn one of just 21 uniforms. LeGrande, 17 at the time, would make the team and become a battery mate of Pride, who was returning to the Red Sox roster after a stint in the Army.
LeGrande often sat in the seat right in front of Pride on road trips and admits that he and the other Memphis players were not big fans of Charley’s taste in music.
“He used to sing that country and western stuff on the team bus, and we didn’t want to hear that mess back then,” said LeGrande. “We kept the bus radio on a Black station out of Gallatin, Tennessee, that played the blues, and we used to love it when Charley would imitate Eddie Jones.”
Jones was better known as Guitar Slim and Pride earned the admiration of his teammates with his version of Slim’s soulful hit, “The Things That I Used to Do.” But when his career on the diamond ended, Pride opted to take the road less traveled into the all-white world of country music.
When the “Pride of Sledge, Mississippi” made his Salem Civic Center debut as an opening act in the late 1960s, LeGrande was retired from baseball and working at the GE plant just down the street from the arena.
“I remember two things from that night,” said LeGrande. “The black suit Charley was wearing and the fact that he accidentally fell off the stage and hurt his hip.”
With 29 number-one hits, Pride did not make too many other slips in his career. LeGrande also made a name for himself catching for the one and only Satchell Paige and eventually making it into the Yankees organization.
“Charley crossed over to sing the white man’s music and really nobody did what Charley Pride did,” said LeGrande. “He was country music’s Jackie Robinson.”