Henderson County (Jun 4, 2021) - Four commercial buildings downtown have changed hands, including the Social Security Administration office and the former Western Carolina Auction Co. packinghouse site on South Grove Street.
4:12 pm UTC Feb. 16, 2021
Country music trailblazer Charley Pride
Photo: Ricky Rogers, The Tennessean, Illustration: Brian Gray, USA TODAY Network
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As the National Museum of African American Music opens its doors, journalists from the USA TODAY Network explore the stories, places and people who helped make music what it is today in our expansive series, Hallowed Sound.
Intertwining Black and white communities shaped country music.
Decades before Entertainer of the Year trophies and heated competition for radio placement, the fiddle descending from European immigrants and the banjo created by African slaves melded in the American South.
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Photo: Jason Kempin | Getty Images for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
Charley Frank Pride was a rare commodity. Not only was he an icon with universal appeal, but his six-decade career also embodied a strong message that many to this day still don t understand. He was living proof that being true to yourself and what you love is the highest form of cultural authenticity, and that country music as much as music of any other tradition belongs to everyone. Pride, who died Dec. 12 at 86 of complications from COVID-19, was the first Black superstar in country music s modern era, although he knew better than most that he wasn t the idiom s first African American performer.